subsystems. It seems as if the answer to this dilemma lies in an operational compromise: feed the brain words through learning while feeding it with strategies for using them, vi.z learn while you acquire. Learn in the context of acquisition, rather than dissociate the operational subsystems of languaging. Do not separate substance and form, because if the "medium is the message", equally "the message shapes the medium".
As children's verbal knowledge grows, previously unanalyzed linguistic forms enter cognitive consciousness and tend to be analyzed. Paradigms--or apparent paradigms--are identified. Rules are inferred. The first stage is overgeneralization: "teached" for "taught", "goed" for "went" (Why on earth can't the English speak logically--as children do?) Appropriate use of rules and their many exceptions ("exceptions" being the rule in English) result from a reorganizational process. Should we teach ESL as a set of rules (with their innumerable exceptions) or as a body of discrete entities euphemistically called "exc
...