Especially in speaking, students learn to do what they do. Repeating dialogs, drilling patterns, and memorizing rules, vocabulary, and verb endings are not expressions of language skill, but means to achieving a skill. Those students who drill constantly may become fluent in manipulating structure, but be
358 Part Two: Practice
unable to use that same structure to express their own ideas. Those students who memorize all the rules may be amazing grammarians but be unable to apply the rules to express their own ideas. Success in both cases depends upon the ability to transfer known grammatical forms and vocabulary to novel combinations used to express meaning in new situations. Such transfer is not automatic, unconscious, or easy; it must be premeditated. The person responsible for seeing that the students have opportunities to use all structures and vocabulary in new contexts is the teacher. Past practice seems to have been predicated on the premise that second-language acquisition is primarily a process of stuffing the memory or drilling habits. The emerging picture is one of activating the thought-to-language conversion process. In this process the learner is an active agent guided by the teacher who is responsible for establishing comprehension, for creating a productive affective state and social atmosphere, and for providing communicative contexts for language usage.
Before finishing a unit or chapter, the teacher should expect the students to be able to talk about themselves and their lives, using the content of the unit or chapter. The teacher should provide these opportunities but should stay in the background as much as possible. It is the students who need to practice. Too often, conversation sessions become listening comprehension sessions for the students as the teacher practices.
In evaluating this criterion, teachers should make it a practice to ask themselves before proceeding to a new chapter, "Do the students have the ability to communicate with a native on a topic or topics related to the content of the chapter?" The implication is that the students have a functional knowledge of the material. It is crucial in skill development that the teacher not confuse means and goals.