Educators at all levels are increasingly being told that classrooms should be places where students are guided through processes of critical inquiry, work collaboratively, and use both written and oral languages as tools for learning. The value of a collaborative, language-centered approach to teaching and learning can be demonstrated by drawing on two sources: (1) the work of language and composition theorists; and (2) the experiences of practicing classroom teachers. Theorists such as Janet Emig and James Britton present strong arguments for the use of written and oral language as ways of making and communicating meaning, of shaping knowledge, and of coming to know oneself. School and college teachers who espouse collaborative classrooms often discuss this approach in terms that transcend merely its language-based and cognitive value. Beyond these categories, teachers view such a classroom in terms of its social and cultural value, both to students--in the classroom and beyond--and to teachers, thus ascribing to it a global, humanistic value beyond the subject matter of the classroom. In short, despite the forces which wage war against this kind of pedagogical shift, this information attests to the value of changing the traditional classroom model to one that is collaborative, process-oriented, and which features both oral and written language which are used to create meaning as well as to communicate it. (Included are three figures which list the values of such an approach, based on an informal survey of teachers.) (Author/HB)