Second Language Acquisition and Second ... - Stephen Krashen

many other schools. The method is "inductive", that is, students are led to induce, or
guess, the rules. In a typical lesson, the teacher asks what are hopefully meaningful,
interesting questions of members of the class in hopes of preparing a context for the
target structure. The following exchange is a good example (taken from the instructor's
manual, Pucciani and Hamel, 1974; p. 321). The purpose in this exercise is to teach the
conjunction "bien que" and the fact that its presence requires that the following verb be
in the subjunctive mood:
Teacher: Fait-il beau aujourd'hui?
Student: Non, il ne fait pas beau maintenant.
Teacher: Irez-vous cependant à la plage pendant le week-end?
Student: Oui, j'irai cependant à la plage pendant le week-end.
Teacher: Irez-vous à la plage bien qu'il ne fasse pas beau?
Student: Oui, j'irai à la plage bien qu'il ne ...
My excellent teacher followed this sort of pattern, and often tailored questions to
individual students' interests. For example, one member of the class was a dedicated
beachgoer, and the example given above was actually used with this student. My
teacher also allowed some "free-play". If the student did not give her the structure she
was looking for, she tolerated some "conversation", as long as it was in French (a
cornerstone of the Pucciani-Hamil approach is the exclusive use of the target language
in the classroom). Indeed, despite the fact that the class was a first-year (third quarter)
level class, it often had the flavor of a conversation class.
The explicit goal of the class was learning, conscious control of structure. There was
error correction, and after enough examples of the above sort had been elicited, there
was explanation of the rule (in French), along with further examples if necessary.
What is particularly interesting is that many of the students felt that the obvious
success of this class was due to grammar work. One excellent student (a man in his
sixties) felt he needed to "firm up" his grammar before doing conversation in French,
and he told me that he felt our teacher's finest quality was her ability to explain
complex rules of French grammar. My hypothesis is that much of the success of the
class was due to the teacher's use of teacher-talk, her ability to provide a simple code
that provided nearly optimal input for acquisition. The
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