A False Yardstick

The notion that improved communciative skills are to be achieved through gradual exposure to increasingly complex grammar structures, item by item, as the structure of a traditional course book requires, creates a distorted perception of language learning; and the consequent measure, that this perception gives rise to, for assessing linguistic competence and progress made i.e. the extent of the student's mastery over these structures, is a false yardstick.