in the late 1970s, Pastsy Lightbown (1983a, b) carried out a series of longitudinal and cross-sectional investigations into the effect of audiolingual instruction on interlanguage development. The investigations focused on French-speaking learners aged 11-16 in Quebec, Canada. Students in these programmes typically participated in the types of rote repetition and pattern practice drill we saw in Examples 1 and 2 .