part 1 introduction

Focus on form instruction is a type of instruction that, on the one hand, holds up the importance of communicative language teaching principles such as authentic communication and student-centeredness, and, on the other hand, maintains the value of the occasional and overt study of problematic L2 grammatical forms, which is more reminiscent of noncommunicative teaching (Long, 1991). In order to use linguistic forms communicatively, learners need to engage in meaning-focussed language use (Prabhu, 1987). However, full acquisition requires students to attend to form while engaged in meaning-focussed language use (Long , 1991). Learners will prioritise meaning over form when performing a communicative activity because it is difficult to attend simultaneously to both (VanPatten, 1990). Thus, it is necessary to find ways of drawing students attention to form during a communicative activity (Doughty, 2001). Focus on F orm (FonF) is a particular kind of form-focussed instruction. It is the treatment of linguistic form in the context of performing a communicative task. It is particularly appropriate in strong versions of communicative language teaching - such as Content-Based Instruction (CBI) or Task-Based Learning and Teaching (TBLT). It can also be applied in weak versions of CLT, when the learners are engaged in communicative activities. Focus on form instruction is different from modes of instruction that, in general, are aimed at teaching specific L2 grammatical forms, rather than presenting language as an mechanism for communication. This type of instruction, which Long and Robinson call focus on forms instruction, has been featured in the syllabi of methods such as the Situational Language Teaching and the Audiolingual Method. In these methods, instruction progresses as learners exhibit mastery of the sequentially- presented grammatical

structures, and thus are generally non-communicative in the sense that they do not foster L2 development that enables learners to engage in real-life communication. In addition, such methods focus on the prescribed L2 grammatical forms that the teacher can transmit to his/her students; in this way, they are teacher-centered. Focus on form instruction, in contrast, is learner-centered due to its aim of responding to learners perceived needs in a spontaneous manner. In FonF, the main focus is on meaning. Attention to form (grammar) arises out of meaning-centred activity. For example: students are engaged in an information-gap task. A problem arises because of a failure to use or understand a particular grammatical feature. The teacher deals with the problem briefly. The student corrects him/herself. For some theorists, FonF is the most appropriate type of formfocussed instruction. Long (1991) and Long and Robinson (1998) also argue that focus on form instruction is different from the purely communicative instruction, or what they call focus on meaning instruction. For them, focus on meaning instruction is paramount to spending little or no time on the discrete parts of language; instead, the interest is on the use of language in real-life situations. Such a mode of instruction is apparent in the Natural Approach (Terrell and Krashen, 1983), which, in theory, prohibits direct grammar teaching. In contrast, Long (1991) and Long and Robinson (1998) assert that the occasional focus on the discrete-forms of the L2 via correction, negative feedback, direct explanations, recasts, etc., can help students become aware of, understand, and ultimately acquire difficult forms. valuable, according to In sum, both focus on forms and focus on meaning instruction are Long (1991) and Long and Robinson (1998), and should

complement rather than exclude each other. Focus on form instruction, in their view, maintains a balance between the two by calling on teachers and learners to attend to form when necessary, yet within a communicative classroom environment.

According to Doughty & Williams (1998), FonF assumes an indirect, context-based focus on grammar, rather than overt, teacher-led instruction (Fotos, 1998:302). Classroom activity is based on communicative tasks. Grammatical issues should arise from difficulties in communication identified by learners and/or teacher. Remedial treatment is done by transitory corrective feedback. When more extended grammar treatment is needed, this should be based on grammar problem-solving tasks. Planned FonF involves the use of focused tasks. For example, communicative tasks that are designed to elicit the use of a specific linguistic form or a same/different picture task which necessitates the use of prepositions such as on, under, in, etc, Incidental FonF involves unfocussed tasks: For example, tasks that have no specific form in mind. During such tasks, attention to specific forms may arise, or a student may want to know the meaning, spelling pronunciation of a particular word in order to continue the communicative activity. The difference is whether the teacher plans to stimulate the students to use a particular form of the language. FonF assumes that the teacher may not have previously taught the form in focus, but will have designed a task where its use is normal or unavoidable, or whether the teacher simply wishes to deal with grammatical issues as they arise incidentally in communication. In this case, the teacher cannot have previously focussed on all the forms that are likely to arise in the communicative activity. Reactive FonF: The teacher or student responds to an error that a student makes in the context of a communicative activity: For example: Student: I was in bus. Teacher: In bus?

Pre-emptive FonF: The teacher or student makes a linguistic form the topic of a short interaction even though no error has been committed: For example: Student: What does this word mean?

So far, we have considered reactive focus on form giving feedback to an error while preemptive FonF consists of attempts by students or teacher to make a particular form the topic of an exchange, even though no error (or perceived error) has occurred. In many classrooms this is a common occurrence. Students pre-emptive FonF: In the above example, the student wants to explain that she uses translation as a strategy for learning vocabulary - but doesnt know the word. She requests assistance. The advantage of student pre-emptive FonF is that it addresses immediate gaps in the students knowledge. Learners are more likely to remember items that they need. However, student-initiated FonF can detract from a communicative activity. Another disadvantage is that one students gap may not be anothers so other students may waste their time. Teachers pre-emptive FonF: Teachers vary enormously in the extent in which they engage in pre-emptive FonF. Some hardly intervene at all preferring to let the communication flow among the students Others intervene frequently presumably because they feel the need to create explicit learning opportunities within a communicative task. One problem is that the teacher cannot know for certain what the students gaps are. It may be better for teachers to limit themselves to reactive feedback.

FonF: Is the teacher scaffolding? (Van Lier, 1996, p. 196) Contextual support - a safe but challenging environment: errors are expected Continuity - a balance between routine and variation. Intersubjectivity - two minds thinking as one. Flow communication flows in a natural way.

Contingency the assistance depends on learners reactions Handover the learner is ready to undertake similar tasks without help

PART II

FOCUS ON FORM IN PRACTICE

Teachers in our school try to focus instruction on the teaching/learning of specific L2 grammatical items. Our aim is to help students learn how to use language in a way that emulates realistic communicative scenarios. A communicative lesson has two purposes: to improve students fluency and confidence, and to help build their linguistic competence. Too much attention to form may inhibit student fluency but too little attention to form may enhance fluency at the expense of linguistic competence. One of the main reasons for using FonF is to make learners aware of specific forms at the time that they need them. The teacher in our school also likely feel obligated to spend the majority of our time helping students prepare for such exams, leaving little energy for focus on form instruction. Often times, such tests focus on discrete grammatical points and minimize real-life communicative abilities and the students motivation in learning English is to pass the exam. Most of them think that they will become workers in the future, so it is unnecessary to learn English because they will have no chance communicate with foreigners in English. Implicit correction consists of confirmation request, clarification request and recast while explicit correction includes signaling that an error has been made, use of metalanguage, provide the correct form. Immediate implicit correction: Implicit correction refers to the process of providing the learner with indirect forms of feedback. After an error was made by the learners, again the teacher immediately stepped in to correct them implicitly. The implicit feedback provided to the learner in the present research was in the form of recast-the correct reformulation of the learners erroneous utterances. 5

Immediate explicit correction: As soon as learners made an error, the teacher immediately stepped in to correct them by providing the learners with the correct form as well as metalinguistic explanation of the rule related to this form. Delayed explicit correction: When the learners made an error, the teacher waited till the students attempt to reconstruct the text had finished. In fact, the teacher avoided correcting the error while the learners were talking about the content of the passage. The teachers only made rough notes of the errors made by the learners. The correction was carried out explicitly using explicit corrective moves; that is, providing the learner with the correct form together with a metalingual explanation of the rule for the correct form. Besides, learners are able to process the corrective feedback. Also, it is as a result of understanding their errors that learners are more likely able to restructure their interlanguage. Explicit error correction creates more understanding and thus facilitates learning better than implicit error correction. Explicit correction on the whole is more effective than implicit correction with one caveat; that is, explicit correction seems to work very well for morphological and not so well for syntactical features. Explicit metalinguistic feedback works better with easy rules than hard rules. In contrast, implicit feedback is more effective with hard rules. Thus, teachers need to be selective in deciding which type of error correction to employ, taking into account the learners developmental readiness. The distinction is a continuum not a dichotomy: reactive feedback can be moreor-less implicit/explicit. The continuum moves from conversational to pedagogical. Teachers vary their feedback on their assessment of the situation. If they think that the student can identify the error and correct it, they are likely to use implicit feedback. But if they think that the student does not know the form or will have difficulty identifying what the error is, they are more likely to choose an explicit form. Whether implicit or explicit,

the point is that the teacher has identified an error and considers it important to intervene. Students are more likely to notice the form that is being addressed if the focus is made explicit. In a communicative activity, an implicit focus may be ignored because the student does not realize that attention is being drawn to the form of the message. But an explicit focus interrupts the communicative flow. The teacher has to decide on the spot about which sort of feedback (implicit or explicit) to provide, alternatively, perhaps to move from implicit to explicit. This option is most likely to disrupt the students communicative flow. It tells the students that the teacher is more interested in form than meaning. Also, the teachers intervention may not be necessary perhaps the student does know, and/or there is not likely to be communication breakdown. But there may be occasions when a pre-emptive move is useful, for example, when students are planning a communicative activity. Students - especially adults - are likely to ask form - focussed questions during a communicative activity. How should the teacher deal with these questions? Three possibilities: answer immediately, ignore them or leave them until later. Whichever option a teacher adopts needs to be informed by social as well as linguistic considerations. Teachers shouldnt upset students by refusing to answer, but they must also be motivated by what best aids learning. The underlying assumption behind FonF is that learners can correct their own grammatical errors with assistance from the teacher. In other words, they have a degree of linguistic (grammatical) competence. They use this core knowledge to communicate but make mistakes. However what is the source of this pre-existing knowledge? How have they learnt or acquired this core knowledge? It seems that in most cases students need some previous focus on forms (FonfS).

PART III

CONCLUSION

The teachers should decipher whether or not focus on form instruction is appropriate for their pedagogical realities, and make informed curricular and classroom choices regarding its use. The teacher should take the responsibility of helping learners attend to and understand problematic L2 grammatical forms when the students are experiencing difficulties in the comprehension and/or production of certain L2 grammatical forms. Teachers are obligated to assist them notice their erroneous use and/or comprehension of these forms and supply them with the proper explanations and models of them. Moreover, teachers can help their students notice the forms that they currently lack, yet should know in order to further their overall L2 grammatical development. Teachers should aim to help students learn how to use language in a way that emulates realistic communicative scenarios. Likewise, evaluation should center on students abilities to actively engage in authentic communication, using the forms they have learned during interaction. The teacher is able to identify formal errors by learners (in small classrooms) and able to provide spontaneous (and accurate) treatment of deviant target forms. Learners are able to take up this transitory treatment to correct themselves and can reinforce uptake of target forms by using them frequently in the classroom, and also in everyday life. The assumption that learners can access real life communication may be reasonable for some ESL contexts, but may be invalid for most EFL classrooms (Fotos, 1998).

PART IV

REFERENCES

Doughty, C. (2001). Cognitive underpinnings of focus on form. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language learning (pp. 206-257). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Ellis, R, Basturkmen, H., & Loewen, S, (2002). Doing focus-on-form. System, 30, 419432. Fotos, S .(1998). Shifting the focus from form to forms in the EFL classroom. ELT Journal, 52, 4, 301-307. Long, M.H. (1991) Focus, on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In de Bot, K., Ginsberg, R., & Kramsch, C. (Eds.), Foreign language research in crosscultural perspective (pp. 39-52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Poole, Alex(2005) Focus on form instruction: Foundations, applications, and criticisms. The Reading Matrix, Vol. 5, No. 1. Prabhu, N.S. (1987). Foreign language pedagogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Patten, B. (1990) Attending to form and content in the input. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 12, 287-301.

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