(5) What needs and what opportunities does the student have for developing personal relationships with people who interest him? This question is related to the first two, for one 'does things right' primarily in the eyes of other people, and it is to other people that one 'transmits real messages.' But there is no reason why a language course should confine itself to helping the student 'get things right' and 'transmit real messages', either through talking about books, tables, pens and blackboards or through acting out imaginary episodes in the life of an American who is living with a Sarkhanese family. Built into the materials may be opportunities to become better acquainted with instructors and classmates.
These opportunities may be of two different kinds. The more obvious type is concerned with the content of the interrelationships: finding out about the other person's family, his likes and dislikes, his earlier experiences, and so forth. A second type grows out of competition and cooperation in the common tasks of studying and living together. The second kind of relationship may grow along with the first, or it may thrive without it. This is another key feature of the first stage of Gattegno's Silent Way of language teaching, in which very intense interpersonal interplay is carried out in the context of discussing abstract relationships among small colored wooden blocks.
CONCLUSION
When a student engages in activities that normally take place only inside a language classroom, it is as though he were picking up in his hands the stones from which he was to construct a wall. These activities include memorization of word lists, dialogs or rules, and performance of systematic drills; they also include
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