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them, however, may decide that the language class is not a place where they choose to confront the issues of alienation, or of personal values... they may just want to be taught well.... We must respect this decision" (p. 293).
What is perhaps a more fundamental problem is that the second language classroom is seen, by many students and teachers, as an artificial linguistic environment regardless of attempts to promote "real" communication. The fact that it is a classroom, and the fact that the class is called "Spanish" or "English", of itself may subvert any effort to meet requirement two, and may prevent students from fully focussing on the meaning of what is said. In other words, the filter may always be "up", to some extent, and many students will never get so interested in what is being said that they forget it is in a second language.
There are other limitations of the classroom that are not related to its failure to fully satisfy requirement two. As mentioned in Chapter III, there is really no way the classroom can provide the variety of second language use necessary for real competence in a second language, no matter how varied the presentation, no matter how many different situations are used in role playing activities. There is also no way the classroom can provide the quantity of input required for truly advanced competence in a second language. These are not real problems, when we consider what the classroom is for. If the student can make the transition to the real world, if the student can begin to use the outside for comprehensible input, both quantity and variety will be provided.
We will examine a number of possible alternatives and supplements in the sections that follow, and, as we did with language teaching methods earlier, analyze them according to the predictions made by second language acquisition theory and survey what empirical evidence there is that confirms that these approaches are effective. We will first look at some very obvious supplementary activities to the second language classroom, conversation (the real thing, with native speakers of the target language) and pleasure reading, then move to some ideas and programs that have met with real success in some contexts and that could be extended to other contexts.
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