Recommends that language teaching be organized by complexity of communication tasks rather than by difficulty of linguistic structure, that learner speech be analyzed on its own terms borrowing methods from child language studies, and that the adjustments in speech that teachers make in talking to students be recognized as such. (MLA)

Second language (L2) learning has much more in common with L1 acquisition than has been traditionally acknowledged. New ideas about the nature of language, how it is learned, and how it is used must be taken into consideration when planning foreign language programs. (Author/CFM)