or, or editor" ("Another" 409). Krashen's "Comprehensible Input Hypothesis" is the foundation of his edifice. To Krashen, it is not the analysis and synthesis of form which lead to language competency, but the inductive apprehension of meaningful contents. Consequently, language is neither "taught" nor "learned"; it is "acquired". By 1981, the author vacillated somewhat and concluded that "teaching certainly can help. Its primary function is to supply comprehensible input for those who cannot get it elsewhere" (Second 37). He admitted that direct instruction on specific rules has a measurable impact on tests that focus the performer on form, but the effect is short-lived (e.g. Harley, 1989; White, 1991). Krashen acknowledges that "formal grammar teaching can be done when students know the limits of conscious grammatical knowledge: When they know it is not the major source of second language competence" ("Another" 410). In other words, grammar may be taught in extremis if it replaces "natural order" acquisition of meaningful contents.
The question one may ask, however, is whether grammar is not precisely a "natural" ordering of meaningful contents. Apart from the semantic imbroglio, the problem is one of didactics rather than linguistics. How does one teach or learn grammar better . . . if it is to be taught formally at all: inductively or deductively, consciously or unconsciously, formally or informally? The morphology and syntax of language--the grammar--is precisely the order, the form, of comprehensible input, of languaging. Theoretically, therefore, to dichotomize between form and function, grammar and contents, is to state a false problem. The only problem is pedagogical, rather than linguistic. How does one teach and learn a second language best? Can one learn the structure of language, grammar, inductively by merely listening, speaking, reading, and writing meaningful messages? Or would learning grammatical rules formally e...