This study presents an analysis of the successive steps used by Italian-speaking secondary school students to acquire mastery of the relative pronoun in standard French. This structure was chosen for study because the acquisition of the French relative pronoun is a source of difficulty for Italian learners. An analysis was made of the students interlanguage as it evolved from the second through the fifth year of study in order to explain errors and to clarify the students' learning strategies. The analysis was limited to the forms "qui,""que," and "dont." It was hypothesized that facility in the use of relative pronouns is acquired in several steps. The pronouns "qui" and "que" generally serve as connectives, and rules concerning the elimination of the element to which the pronoun refers are applied only gradually. The morphophonological rules are observed only after the acquisition of competence in elimination of the second identical element in the clause. It appears that these steps parallel cognitive development in children. Acceptance of the data implies that the intermediate steps, including errors, would have to be accepted. If formal language instruction is to terminate at an intermediate level, it is suggested that such errors not be corrected because they are not a barrier to communication. It is noted that the students' simplifcation process is also found in popular French. (AMH)