In addition to the communicative end served by language learning, there is another objective: the discovery, by the student, of the system and the workings of his native language. The values of this objective include: (1) formative value: the possibility of achieving a better understanding of the fundamental and uniquely human phenomenon which is language; (2) instrumental value: the possibility of the student's thus developing communicative competence in his native language; (3) auxiliary value: the contribution that this approach can make to the comprehension and acquisition of the structure and functioning of a second language. These values inform a fundamental pedagogical tenet: Teaching the native language in primary school should not consist of teaching children to use or transcribe correctly a code that they already know, nor of teaching them a "correct" language to replace a "non-standard" one, but rather of promoting a mastery of a richer, more diversified verbal repertoire. This goal in turn demands that three pedagogical principles be observed: (1) start from the existing verbal repertoire of the child; (2) develop in the child heuristic instruments to help facilitate his intuitive discovery of the structure and workings of his own variety of the native language, as well as other socio-culturally dependent varieties of the language; and (3) provide the child with linguistic givens rich enough to aid in the broadening of his verbal repertoire. (DB)