learning. This type of argument has

learning. This type of argument has also been advocated by Altman and Vaughan James (1980), Candlin (1984), and Krashen (1985). Second language acquisition studies assert the primacy of the learner's inherent psychological capacity to acquire linguistic competence where this capacity acts upon comprehensible input. The learner has a natural inclination to impose order upon new knowledge and capabilities, which both have to be learned in order to be made manageable. A learner not only consciously or unconsciously seeks to superimpose his or her own plan of content upon the teacher's syllabus (Corder 1981), but learners will also superimpose their own learning strategies and preferred ways of working upon classroom methodology (Rubin and Wenden 1987; Breen 1987a). This means that it is not so much the content of the lesson that is learned but the teaching-learning process and the activities and roles it entails. This becomes the significant substance of lessons for those who participate.
As we have already pointed out, Formal and Functional/Notional
approaches to language teaching are essentially propositional in that they
attempt to map out knowledge of the language and the conventions of language
performance. Task-based approaches represent how something is done. Task-
based approaches organize and present what is to be achieved through teaching
and learning in terms of how a learner might engage his or her communicative
competence in undertaking a range of tasks (Breen 1987c). Or, in other words, the Formal, Functional/Notional approaches offer a route towards learning a language by the organization of the content so that it may harmonize with the objectives of
the course. Task-based type approaches address the ways in which learners may achieve objectives and how they navigate the route themselves (Allwrightl984).

The Formal approach to language teaching provided little if any opportunityto gain what the Vygotskyan framework would call self-regulation in the tasks learners were required to perform in the target language. Traditionally, EFL/ESL type teaching has either forced students to be object-regulated by the language through texts, drills, exercises, and such like or at best be other-regulated by the teacher. The very fact that teachers often focus on learner
errors while the learner tries to speak or write sends the implicit message that
self-regulation is not permitted when using the target language. The language is
thus presented to the learner not as an activity for achieving self-regulation in the presence of others but as some object divorced from the natural develop-
mental processes that the individual has previously undergone in acquiring his
first language. The difficulty then with the formal approach was that methods
were used that contradicted the previous experience of the learner. In other
words the interactive experience of the ontogenesis of learners" first language
was not followed up as a learning process. Long and Crookes (1987) pointed
out that in most language classrooms the teacher allows for little, if any, feed-
back from the learners which would permit a two-way interaction. In natural
conversation, speakers self-regulate through activities such as confirmation,
comprehension checks, and the like. The classroom is dominated by object- and other-regulation.