Ten commonly-held positions concerning language learning and teaching and counter-positions for each are presented with the counter-positions supported with experiences from a first-year French classroom. The positions challenged are: (1) it is inappropriate to mix English and the target language in the same spoken sentence; (2) students cannot learn to speak a foreign language well enough to create their own sentences within two years; (3) students cannot understand the target language well enough for the teacher to conduct class in it; (4) students never have to repeat material they have been exposed to once; (5) students should not look at the written form of the target language for several weeks, to avoid English interference; (6) learning to write the language has little to do with learning to speak it, and should be put off until fairly late; (7) past foreign language teaching techniques are all bad which is why no one uses grammar-translation or audio-lingual methods; (8) memorization of dialogues is an unrealistic method; (9) foreign language students know English grammar; and (10) any native speaker can teach the target language. A flexible, pragmatic approach to language teaching, always keeping in mind what the objective is, is recommended. (MSE)