It can be argued that the growing dissatisfaction with native language instruction in the schools arises inevitably from the fact that the facts of life about classroom instruction do not mesh well with the key features of successful language instruction. Effective language instruction presupposes the construction of a learning environment in which is provided properly supervised practice of relevant learning tasks. Such practice should provide individualization of remediation and individualization of work assignment. Classrooms are structured around the needs of teachers rather than the needs of students. From the fact that a teacher can only do one thing at a time follow a number of system features of classroom instruction which are incompatible with learning environment criteria for good language instruction. A most crucial task of language instruction today, therefore, is to devise a new classroom regime capable of satisfying all major language learning environment criteria. (Author/FWB)