Corollary 2.1: Language teaching and course design will be very diverse

The days of a monolithic approach to language courses, imposed on all learners, is well past (or should be). As students change and their perceived needs and objectives change, so will the content and techniques of language courses. Sometimes language programs are set up as a series of discrete units on grammar, sound production, development of reading skills, or written composition, thus tearing apart the seamless garment of language. Study of sound production is integrally related to syntax, which can be of no use without semantics and pragmatics. Cultural expectations affect syntactic and lexical choice, as well as sound and kinesic elements These things are best learned and practiced together in use.

Living language courses should be designed with primary attention to content, while allowing for the development and consolidation of relevant language skills. Written language can be improved through reports and articles on political and economic developments in a country where the language is spoken, or through correspondence (most likely electronic these days) with someone who knows that country intimately. Classes can now be twinned easily across language groups and geographical areas to work on joint projects via computer and modem. Sounds can be practiced through drama, the reading and writing of poetry, or production of radio or video programs for community access broadcasts. The literature and intellectual ideas of other cultures have always attracted language learners. Travel narratives, biographies, case studies from the business or legal world, environmental and conflict-resolution studies are other candidates, the latter often introduced through simulations that involve the students actively.). One could go on endlessly brainstorming possibilities. Language is a vehicle that should not be driven around empty.

There is no need, as has so often been the accusation, for language courses to lack intellectual content. As language teachers we are fortunate in that any kind of content (philosophical, literary, scientific, commercial, aesthetic, or cultural) is appropriate for a language course, so long as it provides opportunities for contact with and active personalized use of the language. Wherever there are enough students for diversification, several parallel courses should be offered at each level, allowing for student selection of content and approach. Should such diversity not be possible for logistical reasons, different contents and approaches should be available as the student advances through the language sequence.[9] Students from abroad who will be proceeding to specialized studies in their new language need a different kind of help; if they come from very different educational systems they frequently need guidance in giving oral reports and reporting on experiments, as well as in the formal requirements of writing papers, searching databases, and drawing up bibliographies. In many institutions it is possible for teachers of language to cooperate with teachers of other disciplines by providing tutorials in the study of documents and other textual material (aural or written) that are available only in the language they are learning; in yet others, language teachers prepare language learners for internships in career-related fields in a country where the language is spoken. In some settings it is appropriate for whole courses of specialized subject matter (history, economics, cultural studies) to be taught in the language or for language learners to be incorporated in ongoing subject-matter courses along with native speakers. Care should be taken in such situations to see that students, when first confronted with studying a high level of subject matter in their new language, are provided with a backup of language assistance, so that they do not feel overwhelmed and fall back on desperate dictionary searching and mental translation into the first language. Such a traumatic experience often sets language learners back considerably in their progress and destroys fragile, newly developing skills of natural expression in their new language.

Content of relevance to the life, interests, and future career of the student brings the language alive and sparks motivation to use it actively. Let us be imaginative in devising course content and learning activities to meet the needs of all comers, so that students learn through doing _ through using the language in intellectually and socially demanding ways.