ABSTRACT
How does anyone learn about language? In a recent examination of writing and a reconsideration of reading and of spoken language learning, I have been struck by the enormous detail and complexity of language that most individuals learn. Current psychological and educational views of learning, including the hypothesistesting approach on which I have tended to rely, now seem to me to be inadequate to account for all the language learning that is achieved. Nor do they account for those occasional difficulties or failures that most people experience with one aspect of language or another – perhaps with spelling, or with certain points of grammar, or with second-language learning – although the individual may have little difficulty with other aspects of language that are intrinsically no less complicated. What we all learn or do not learn with ease varies from one individual to another, and theories of learning should be able to account for this.
