Communicating is not easy! Can the computer help second language learners and teachers?

Second language learners have a great difficulty in apprehending usage rules that are used by native speakers to express their intentions or communicative goals in a way appropriate to the situation at hand. In response to this difficulty, the authors have built a computer program to provide them with the relevant knowledge. The main goal of this paper is to show how their system prototype generates forms appropriate to a given situation, how it analyses submitted linguistic forms, and how the interfaces provided by their prototype, although quite simple, can be used for learning, by teachers and by students alike.