Some Outlandish Proposals for the Teaching of Foreign Languages

Three propositions which bear upon second language learning are defended: (1) Some students need or desire only to be able to read and it is legitimate to design courses for such students which omit training in oral skills unless these help with reading. (2) Passive linguistic knowledge can develop far ahead of active ability, and this fact can be exploited when teaching reading by not demanding the simultaneous ability to write. (3) A number of examples suggest that grammar, lexicon, and phonology can be learned in greater independence of one another than is often assumed. It follows from these three propositions that it might be worth experimenting with courses which first teach the recognition of grammatical forms, then the recognition of lexicon, but which minimize both phonology and the active production of sentences in the new language. Techniques by which this could be accomplished would have the added advantage of avoiding the childish level of materials with which even adult students must usually contend when beginning a foreign language.