ABSTRACT
Many language teachers, or-more properly-many of those whose goal is to inform language teachers, have attempted to draw pedagogical conclusions from contemporary views about the nature and structure of language.1 Since around 1960, the most visible theory of language has been transformational generative grammar, which, naturally, has formed a pole of attraction for language teachers. Some have looked for pedagogical inspiration from that theory’s central conception, namely, that at the heart of language lies an autonomous linguistic competence that represents the speaker’s tacit knowledge of the structure of his or her language.
