The relevance to elementary foreign language instruction of certain findings of child language development (native language) and the psychology of language acquisition is examined. A set of premises is proposed for a new scheme for the teaching of German based on these findings, namely, that comprehension precedes production, that language material is stored in short-term memory as chunks of seven plus two units, that pronunciation is best avoided until syntax and semantics are well learned, that the native language (English) interferes with the learning of the foreign language (German), and that language learning takes place optimally when the student is solving problems rather than memorizing by rote. The report presented here raises questions for continuing research on these theories. The explanatory paper, included with the report, establishes the premises mentioned above and describes their practical application through the use of a teaching machine. (Author/VM)