This paper proposes that research results from the area of natural language processing could effectively be applied to creating software that facilitates the development of language learning materials for any natural language. We will suggest that a knowledge-elicitation system called Boas, which was originally created to support a machine-translation application, could be modified to support languagelearning ends. Boas leads a speaker of any natural language, who is not necessarily trained in linguistics, through a series of pedagogically-supported questionnaires, the responses to which constitute a “profile” of the language.