What Do We Learn When We Learn a Language?

Language-teaching methods and materials are motivated in part by our conception of what it is we are teaching and in part by our notions of how students learn. Four assumptions which underlie the audiolingual method of second language teaching are presented and their adequacy examined. It is argued (1) that the importance we place on spoken skills is arbitrary; (2) that it is not yet possible to specify explicitly all of the components of linguistic or communicative competence; (3) that what we can specify does not have an isomorphic relationship to linguistic performance; and (4) that language learning is not accomplished primarily via a process of habit formation. Alternatively, two propositions are offered: (1) successful use of language requires the acquisition of communicative as well as linguistic competence and (2) first and second language learning are analogous processes.