paraphrasePienemann investigated whether instruction permitted learners to 'skip' a stage in the natural sequence of development. Two groups of Australian university students who were at Stage 2 in their acquisition of German word order were taught the rules associated with Stage 3 and Stage 4 respectively. The instruction took place over two weeks and during this time learners were provided with explicit grammatical rules and exercises for Stage 4 constructions. The learners who received instruction on Stage 3 rules moved easily into this stage from Stage 2. However, those learners who received instruction on Stage 4 rules either continued to use Stage 2 rules or moved only into Stage 3. That is, they were not able to ‘skip’ a stage in the developmental sequence. Pienemann interprets his results as support for the hypothesis that for some linguistic structures, learners cannot be taught what they are not developmentally ready to learn.