ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to learning that takes place in the classroom. It is not a chapter intended to be a “how to” manual for teachers; rather, the focus is on learning that is specific to the classroom environment. In the other chapters in this book, we do not differentiate between different contexts of learning. In other words, even though some examples are taken from a classroom context and others from outside a classroom, we do not focus on the contextual difference in the conclusions we draw. This is mainly due to our fundamental belief that the processes involved in learning a second language do not depend on the context in which the language is being learned. For example, whether or not some mechanism, such as UG, is responsible for learning is not dependent on the context of that learning. Whatever psycholinguistic processing takes place in a naturalistic situation presumably takes place in a classroom situation. Whatever starting point for learning turns out to be valid does not depend on where language learning takes place.
