Seemingly conflicting points of view concerning language instruction which are expressed in various teaching methodologies are reconciled in this paper. Key issues discussed include: (1) the nature of linguistic rules and their relation to the "habits" of language use, (2) the role of grammatical theory in language teaching, (3) the nature of language learning, (4) a balance between an audiolingual habit theory and a cognitive code theory, and (5) some of the critical variables in language pedagogy. The author illustrates why the field of language instruction has become characterized by pedagogical uncertainty and concludes that the teacher's ability to manage learning behavior remains one of the most unexplored, unstudied variables in educational research. (RL)