The process of matching teaching materials and methods to the student's learning style and ability level in foreign language classes is explored. The Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) model offers a diagnostic process for the identification of style. This process can be applied to the language learning setting as a way of presenting material to the whole class and also as a way of creating new strategies for a mismatched student. Each student has unique resources or strategies for transforming sound into purposeful communication through the process of meaningful association. NLP bases its model on the tenet that experience precedes language, similar to the language acquisition process of children. The relationship between the sensory experience which evokes an object and its name must be identified as the channel through which the individual learns language. Examples are given of the application of NLP to students who use the visual and kinesic channels of experience for learning language. (RW)