In language instruction, students do not learn to elicit needed information in the classroom or in real, everyday communicative situations because (1) the material they ask questions about in class is basically uninteresting to them, and (2) many student responses that would be incomprehensible to a non-English-speaking person are left uncorrected in class because they are understood by the teacher. Learners should acquire basic inquiry skills very early in their second-language career, premitting their active movement deeper into the language and permitting them to ask a native speaker what is being discussed, where things are, how to get needed objects, and how to find out what they should or should not say in a given context. In this case, communicative competence is a realistic objective because strong student motivation already exists. Learning activities leading to inquiry skills should be carefully sequenced from the outset, moving from mechanical learning to free communication through mechanical drills, meaningful drills, communicative drills, and communicative interaction and developing cognition, perception, abstraction, and interaction capabilities. It is possible to provide a wide variety of activities for practice in relatively natural pseudo-communication in class. Sample activities and a four-page bibliography are included. (MSE)