Discussed in this paper are reasons why people who speak second languages may not speak or write them with native-speaker-like fluency. These second-language deficiencies may be the results of (1) interference, the use of aspects of another language at a variety of levels; (2) strategies of learning such as over overgeneralization and analogy by means of which the learner tests out his hypotheses about the structure of the language; (3) strategies of assimilation, in which the learner makes his learning task easier; and (4) strategies of communication, whereby the learner adapts what he knows into an efficient communication model, producing an optimal utility grammar from what he knows of the language. In addition to understanding these deficiencies, it is necessary to distinguish between performance and competence errors. The former are occasional and haphazard and are related to such factors as fatigue and memory limitations. The latter are systematic and may represent either a transitional stage in the development of a grammatical rule or the final stage of the speaker's knowledge. While knowledge about second language learning is still largely speculative, excluding the possibility of prescribing recipes for teachers, this account of errors and learning strategies may suggest some of the reasons for errors. (Author/AMM)

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