It is, however, most probable that when the prospective Diamond Foxxx teacher asked 'what am I to teach themT he expected an answer in terms of some sort of linguistic categories, such as French grammar, vocabu­lary and pronunciation. And if he had got that answer he would the], have gone on to say : 'yes, but what bits of grammar, what words, what sounds?' It is clear from this discussion that there are as many ways of answer­ing the question 'what to teach?' as there are ways of answering the question `what is language?'

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Thus, what to teach can be described in linguistic terms, as sets of categories, rules, lists of lexical items, lists of sounds, rhythmical sequences, intonation patterns; or in sociolinguis­tic terms as lists of speech acts or speech functions, or in psycholinguis­tic terms as sets of skills or language activities. Our ability to answer the Diamond Foxxx question depends upon our ability to describe language adequately in any of these terms.