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THE EXPLORATIVE-CREATIVE WAY: IMPLEMENTATION OF A HUMANISTIC LANGUAGE TEACHING MODEL . Wil Knibbeler. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1989. Pp. ix + 197.

In his book Knibbeler presents his own method or, rather, as he claims, approach, to language teaching, which he calls the Explorative-Creative Way. This approach actually synthesizes a number of ideas and assumptions derived from humanistic trends in education (especially as implemented by the four contemporary language teaching methods known as the Silent Way, Suggestopedia, Community Language Learning, and Confluent Education) and from Krashen and Terrell's Natural Approach. Accordingly, the main tenets of Knibbeler's model, presented in the form of 10 operating principles, emphasize such aspects of the teaching/learning process as exploration, creativity, motivation to communicate, affectivity, economy, level-appropriate input, autonomy, risk-taking, self-confidence, and listening to oneself. Thus, as can be seen, Knibbeler's model conforms very much to the contemporary language learning/teaching paradigm and, although the author does not explicitly say so, it can be also subsumed under the generally conceived communicative approach to language teaching. By selecting a number of important affective and communicative elements from several contemporary language teaching methods, Knibbeler has certainly succeeded in developing an approach to language teaching that is internally coherent, modern, interesting, and workable. The main principles of this approach are fairly well justified theoretically and interestingly illustrated by samples of actual classroom techniques and procedures. It is also one of the merits of the book that the author's argumentation is presented in a clear, straightforward, and easy-to-follow style. I would argue, however, that this approach is neither as efficient nor as universally applicable as the author assumes. I do not agree with the author's assumption that allowing the learner to discover the target language by trial and error makes for high educational efficiency. The process of hypothesis formation and testing is the only possibility for a young child acquiring his or her LI or for a naturalistic second language learner, but this does not mean that it is the most efficient procedure in all educational settings, especially in those where the exposure to the L2 is very limited. The whole value of education consists in the fact that we can improve on naturalistic processes and employ more efficient procedures. Language is very highly conventionalized in all its subsystems; in everyday communication, especially in the realization of various communicative functions, we rely very heavily on formulaic speech and are not at all as creative and innovative as many contemporary language educators seem to think. This fact points to the necessity of memorizing lots of large, ready-made chunks of the language and to the tremendous role of memory processes in language learning. Therefore, in many educational contexts, providing learners, in a planned and systematic manner, with language models; having them memorize their most important elements through various pre-communicative, reproductive activities, and only then placing them in simulated communication situations is a much more efficient approach than allowing learners to proceed in a totally spontaneous, trial-and-error manner.