Standards for Success actually encourages the use of the first language. Standard A9 says that students should "employ knowledge of their first language to help form and test hypotheses regarding the target language" and Standard III, the set of grammar standards, also insists that students engage in a "conscious comparison" of the grammatical systems of the first and second language.¹⁷ Conscious comparisons may be interesting for grammarians, but they have nothing to do with language acquisition.

WRITING

Theory and research maintains that writing has two separate aspects. Writing "competence," that is, the possession of good writing style, comes from reading, while writing "performance," the ability to use writing to solve problems and come up with new ideas, comes from actual writing itself and the use of certain strategies that can be taught.

Many studies confirm that those who read more write better.¹⁸ Studies also fail to show a relationship between writing quantity and writing style¹⁹: it is reading, not instruction, that helps us develop a good writing style. This is a reasonable finding: The system of "planned discourse," or the structure of academic writing, is extremely complex, and only the most obvious aspects can be taught directly. The most plausible hypothesis is that most aspects of writing are absorbed gradually from extensive reading.

The ability to use writing to solve problems comes from mastery of the "composing process." Good writers, research tells us, utilize certain strategies that help them do this: They plan, but their plans are flexible,²⁰ they are willing to revise,²¹ they reread what they have written,²² and they delay editing until all their ideas are on the page.²³ Peter Elbow suggests, in addition, that good writers delay considerations of audience until the paper has gone through several drafts.²⁴

Communication Skills Standard IB covers both writing competence (writing style) and performance (the use of writing to solve problems), but does not distinguish the two. B1 lists some strategies that are part of the "writing" (composing) process, but does not tell us why they are desirable for students to master. B2 asks students to be able to "use some basic cohesive devices" in writing, an aspect of form that may emerge as a result of reading. B3 asks writers to develop awareness of audience, context and genre "throughout a prepared composition or speech," suggesting that second language users consider subtle aspects of form while composing, violating the composing process.²⁵

Completely absent from the discussion is whether aspects of the composing process transfer from the first language. Research now suggests that those who plan, revise and delay editing in their first language also do this in their second language.²⁶ It may be that Standard B1 belongs elsewhere, as a language arts standard.

CONCLUSION

Standards, unfortunately, are often used not simply as goals but as guides to pedagogy. The standards set by the Oregon Center will result in a pedagogical approach that emphasizes grammar, output, and an explicit reliance on the first language. Current theory comes to conclusions that are completely opposite: language acquisition is a result of input, grammar plays a peripheral role in second language performance, and first language influence is simply the result of a lack of acquisition of the second language. The Standards also are uninformed about basic writing theory and research.

It should be pointed out that this criticism is not based on the fact that the Standards are focused on literature as the goal of foreign language study. The study of literature is without question a primary goal of foreign language study. But the Standards encourage a curriculum and methodology that is inappropriate for any use of the foreign language, for literature, science, business, or simply getting to know people from other countries and of other cultures.

I do not propose that theory and research should fully determine teaching methodology: The ideas and intuitions of expert teachers should be given at least as much weight. In addition, the creators of the Standards are certainly free to disagree with my version of theory. But they are not free to completely ignore all research on second language acquisition and teaching.

3