5.Connections The various activities had links to each other. The reading was used to provide ideas for the drama and the writing. If we think of language as the four modes: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing (as was the case then) it could be seen that almost all the activities included speaking, listening, writing and reading without conscious distinction or segregation. The written material was read by many people, mainly other students, rather than just by teachers. One of the reasons for this was to develop self-confidence in assessing good and bad writing. Another was that it performed as a simulation of the world of publishing. The English Block was a demonstration of the fact that we can never do only one thing in isolation. When teachers think they are having a lesson on reading they may be ignoring the other things that are inevitably happening at the same time (which may include reading aloud and listening). This connectedness of the English Block was intended to be a preparation for later life.

6. Learning by Practice. There was almost no formal teaching in the sense of teacher-centred lessons given to a whole class at set times. Instead students learned the language skills by practice. It would be interesting to discover whether this created an attitude to learning which carried on in later life - though this too is difficult to define.

7. Theory Does the method of learning the language correspond to Krashen's ideas of acquisition? Krashen postulates a need for what he calls meaningful input and also has proposed a mechanism of learning - the Monitor hypothesis - in which he distinguishes what he calls learning from acquisition. The common sense aspects of his ideas seem to describe much of what went on in the English Block, but by no means all.
What are the theoretical implications of this work? Surely they are that language is a very complex part of human life and probably a good deal more complex than can be described by any theory. Like the human brain it is more complex by many orders of magnitude than the most complex computer software devised, or perhaps devisable. The same is true of the means by which people learn a language. We are dealing with matters of consciousness which give rise to the subtleties found in artistic activity as much as to the precision of reason. English in particular may be a more subtle language than most. This study is concerned more with how people learn than with the nature of language or of texts, and makes the assumption that if people have the right attitude and conditions they can learn anything, even something as complex as the English language, or as much of it as they need.