The students were divided into three groups: a ‘communicative’ group, culture group and a CONTROL GROUP. The ‘communicative’ group had to encourage practice in using French in meaningful, creative, and spontaneous way. The ‘culture’ group had to ‘foster an awareness of the French language and culture through films, music, and art’. The control group had grammar and pronunciation. At the end of the period of instruction, there were no SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES between groups on the linguistic competence measures.
Savignon interpreted these results as support for the argument that second language. Even more important in the context of the ‘Get it right from the beginning’ approach was the evidence that opportunities for freer communication did not cause learners to do less well on measures of linguistic accuracy.