FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS-SPRING 1995

provided by the teacher. This approach combines acquired verbal skills (inductive) with learned reading and writing skills (deductive), with emphasis on the former. As Allen and Corder point out, “Advocates of the

oral method .have assumed that language learning is an inductive rather than a deductive process.” (Allen & Corder 1975, 46). Many common instructional techniques (e.g., the silent way, suggestopaedia, community language learning, the total physical response, the communicative approach) essentially fall into this category, although all may involve some

deductive elements. A long-standing controversy in language education has to do with whether languages can be acquired in the classroom or only learned. Brown (1980, 7), McLaughlin (1987, 20), and Gregg (1987) believe that both learning and acquisition may go on in classrooms. Krashen and Terrell (1983, 18) hold that acquisition can only occur in natural settings, but later admit that “despite our conclusion that language teaching is directed at learning and not acquisition, we think that it is possible to encourage acquisition very effectively in the classroom” (Krashen & Terrell 1983, 27). We agree, and believe that the key question facing language educators is, what classroom conditions and procedures facilitate the occurrence of language acquisition?

An important consideration in attacking this question has to do with the use to which an acquired or learned language is likely to be applied. By its very nature, language acquisition is more likely to manifest in oral fluency than in correct utilization of the written language and conversely for language learning.

Complete command of a language thus involves both acquisition—an inductive process, required to speak fluently—and learning—a deductive process, required to write grammatically. The two processes are not competitive but complementary, just as inductive and deductive reasoning are essential and coequal components of the scientific method. By analogy, it would appear that an ideal classroom setting for teaching a foreign language would be one that stimulates and facilitates both inductive and deductive learning processes, both acquisition and learning. We return to this theme in the concluding section of the paper.