In language learning, there seems to be a sequence of increasingly difficult and complex cognitive processes as the students progress toward the ability to use another language. First, the students must go through an initial stage of acquiring an elementary familiarity with the content of the material they are to learn. This initial competence is attained by means of the receptive skills, listening and reading. The next step is to practice production of this material in exercises and/or drills in order to facilitate its incorporation into the students' repertoire of available language. Only after the achievement of a basic ability in manipulating the words and forms can the students be expected to use this same content in a communicative context.
On the surface, the cognitive processes involved in each phase of language acquisition seem to be different. The first step requires an inductive or deductive mental grasp of concepts that may be quite abstract and unfamiliar. The second phase requires an application of the previously acquired understanding in various exercises and drills. And finally, the students are expected to attach meaning to the learned structural forms as they communicate in a "real" language situation.
The stumbling block seems to be the final phase. Most motivated students gain some insight into the structural manipulations to be undertaken and some facility in performing the exercises and/or drills satisfactorily. They fail, however, in their attempts to attach meaning to the forms of which they have partial control. Students who have memorized perfectly the dialog and who can respond automatically to the related structural drills will slow down considerably and perhaps even come to a frustrated mental halt when asked to talk to someone else using these same words and structures. Learning the vocabulary is not so difficult; learning to manipulate the structures is not impossible; but combining the two to express their own ideas presents almost insurmountable difficulties to many students.
More research and experimentation need to be undertaken with regard to facilitating "real" language activities. Are there exercises that might narrow the gap between manipulation and expression of personal ideas? Would it be possible to combine practice and meaning and to eliminate this present
weakness in the sequence toward language usage? The preceding questions were asked in the 1971 edition of this text. Since that time, progress has been made toward the evolvement of such exercises, practice, and activities. The combination of form and meaning in situational, meaningful contexts is more prevalent. Normally, the fusion of practice of form with expression of ideas in a meaningful context is accomplished by giving the students the structure and/or vocabulary they will need or by supplying them with the needed vocabulary as the occasion arises during the activity and structuring the activity around some situation familiar to the students.
Combining the students' cognitive knowledge of the language with their affective interests is one way of getting the students involved in an activity and of creating a situation that stimulates them. As Christensen (1975, p. 4) puts the case for this type of activity, "Although there is no evidence yet to support the hypothesis, I surmise that as students enter the creative process of producing original language content along affective lines, their learning is intensified, so that grammatical structures are internalized quicker than they are by means of lengthy repetitions of the same language structure, using conventional textbook sentences."