The most fundamental change in the area of L2 learning in recent years has been a shift from concern with the teacher, the textbook and the method to an interest in the learner and the acquisition process. For example, one radical feature of most communicative approaches is the toleration of “errors” produced by students. Traditionally, “errors” were regarded negatively and had to be avoided or eradicated. The more recent acceptance of such errors in learners’ use of the L2 is based on a fundamental shift in perspective from the more traditional view of how L2 learning takes place.

Rather than consider a Spanish (L1) speaker’s production of in the room there are three womens as simply a failure to learn correct English (which can be remedied through extra practice of the correct form), we can look at this utterance as an indication of the natural L2 acquisition process in action. An “error,” then, is not something that hinders a student’s progress, but is probably a clue to the active learning progress being made by the student as he or she tries out ways of communicating in the new language. Just as children acquiring their L1 produce certain types of ungrammatical forms at times, so we might expect the L2 learner to produce similar forms at certain stages. The example of womens might be seen as a type of overgeneralization (of -s as the plural marker), used by the learner in accordance with the most common way of making plural forms in English.