10

Why focus on form?

Can you learn a language simply by using it? This was certainly the belief that impelled the
early days of the communicative approach, and which underpinned the comprehension
approaches that drew heavily on Krashen’s learning versus acquisition distinction. Experiential,
deep-end approaches to language learning have survived in the form of immersion-type
programs and content-based language teaching. But, generally speaking, the last few decades
have seen a retreat from the view that use is sufficient. Even advocates of task-based learning
acknowledge the value – even necessity – of directing the learners’ attention, not just to the
content of their language use, but to the forms that this content takes. This is the so-called
‘focus-on-form’, as defined by Michael Long (1991: 45):

Focus-on-form … overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally
in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication.

Likewise, it’s a central tenet of the Dogme approach to language instruction that it’s all ‘about
teaching that focuses on emergent language’ (Meddings and Thornbury 2009: 8). To this end
Dogme enlists the concept of focus-on-form: ‘A focus on form … aims to redress the
weaknesses in the second language learner’s innate capacity to notice, tally, and abstract
patterns from the input, and to re-use these abstracted patterns as output’ (ibid.: 20).

However, there are a number of problems inherent in Long’s definition above, such as how
overt is ‘overtly’? And which linguistic elements are drawn attention to – those that cause a
breakdown in communication, those that are inaccurate, or those that not all the learners in the
class might be familiar with? But possibly the biggest problem is with the word ‘incidentally’.

For some researchers, such as Lyster (2007), ‘incidental’ is not good enough. Based on
extensive research into immersion and content-based classrooms in Canada, Lyster argues that
‘there now exists considerable evidence that the prevalence of implicit and incidental treatment
of language [in immersion and content-based classrooms] does not enable students to engage
with language in ways that ensure their continued language growth’ (ibid.: 99).

Lyster is particularly critical of the tendency in content-based classes, i.e. those where a school
subject is taught in the learners’ L2, to take learners’ non-standard utterances and simply recast
them. Recasting means tidying up learners’ ill-formed utterances, but without any overt
indication that they are wrong. For example (from Lyster ibid.: 102):

T:Pourquoi pensez-vous qu’elle veut se faire réchauffer? Oui?

S8:Parce qu’elle est trop froid pour aller dans toutes les [?].
T:Parce qu’elle a froid, OK. Oui?
S9:Elle est trop peur.
T:Parce qu’elle a peur, oui.

[T:Why do you think she wants to warm herself up? Yes?

S8:Because she has too cold to go into all the [?].
T:Because she is cold, OK. Yes?
S9:She has too frightened.
T:Because she is frightened, yes. ]

According to Lyster, recasting of this type seems to happen a lot in content-based instruction,
and is probably motivated by a desire to maintain a focus on the subject matter, as well as to
keep the lesson flowing along. But does recasting pay off in terms of language acquisition?
Only in classes where there is already a strong form-focus, apparently. In classrooms where
the focus is primarily on meaning – as in these content-based ones in Canada – the linguistic
information encoded in recasts goes largely unnoticed by learners.

I think the problem is that Lyster elides ‘incidental’ and ‘implicit’. But the former does not
necessarily entail the latter. Because a focus-on-form arises naturally out of communicative
interaction (i.e. it is incidental in the sense of unplanned) it need not be implicit. This is a
different sense of incidental learning than what Ellis (2008: 966) defines as ‘[the] learning of
some specific feature that takes place without any conscious intention to learn it’. A focus on
form implies conscious intention, or should.

There are alternatives, after all, to recasting. Here, for example, a teacher draws explicit
attention to a student’s use of a ‘false friend’ (from Thornbury 1996: 286):
S3:You have a river, a small river and [gestures].
T:Goes down?
S3:Yes, as a cataract.
T:OK, a waterfall [writes it on board]. What’s a waterfall, Manel? Can you give me an example?
A famous waterfall [draws].
S1:Like Niagara?
T:OK. So what do you do with the waterfall?
S4:You go down.

But it’s not just recasts that Lyster takes issue with. He is also sceptical about the value of a
purely reactive approach in general:

If teachers were to rely exclusively on reactive approaches, students would soon be

discouraged by being pushed in ostensibly random ways to refine their target language output,
without the possibility of accessing linguistic support provided systematically through proactive
instruction (Lyster ibid.: 137).

Proactive instruction is sometimes called (confusingly) a focus-on-formS (plural), because it

typically involves working from a pre-selected syllabus of discrete linguistic items, or forms.
Because a pre-selected syllabus only accidentally represents the learner’s immediate (or even
long-term) communicative needs, this is arguably a high price to pay for allaying the learner’s
aversion to ‘randomness’.

The question, then, is: how can a reactive approach be married to an incidental but explicit
focus-on-form in such a way that learners are not ‘discouraged by randomness’, and that their
long-term communicative needs are met? To paraphrase Larkin,

Ah, solving that question

Brings the applied linguist and the researcher
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Questions for discussion

1. Do you think ‘you can learn a language simply by using it’? Have you had an experience that
suggests as much? Why do you think that there was a ‘retreat’ from this view?

2. According to Long (1991: 45) a ‘focus-on-form … overtly draws students’ attention to

linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or
communication’. What do you understand by the underlined terms in that definition?

3. Recasting has been promoted as a ‘natural’ way of providing feedback to learners, and
replicates the kinds of interactions that young children have with their caregivers. What is your
opinion of recasting? Do you think that feedback should be more overt?

4. Lyster (2007) argues for a ‘counterbalanced approach’, i.e. one in which there needs to be a
strong emphasis on form in classes that are predominantly content-driven, and where there
needs to be a push towards communication in classes that follow a more traditional, form-
focused syllabus. Which ‘direction’ (meaning to form, or form to meaning) seems preferable to
you? Why?

5. Do you agree that in a purely reactive approach learners are likely to feel discouraged and
short-changed? How could you mitigate this?

6. Do you agree that ‘a pre-selected syllabus only accidentally represents the learner’s
immediate (or even long-term) communicative needs’? Why/Why not?

7. Content-driven learning, e.g. in the form of ‘content and language integrated learning’ (CLIL)
has been enthusiastically promoted in recent years. Do you think that this enthusiasm has
overlooked its inherent weaknesses, including its being ‘soft on form’?

8. In what other ways could a focus-on-form be applied in a content-driven class, apart from
through reactive feedback?

References
Ellis, R. (2008) The Study of Second Language Acquisition (2nd ed.), Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

Long, M. (1991) ‘Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology’, in de Bot,
K., Ginsberg, R. and Kramsch, C. (eds) Foreign Language Research in Cross-cultural
Perspectives, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lyster, R. (2007) Learning and Teaching Languages through Content: A counterbalanced
approach, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Meddings, L. and Thornbury, S. (2009) Teaching Unplugged: Dogme in English Language

Teaching, Peaslake: Delta.

Thornbury, S. (1996) ‘Teachers research teacher talk’, ELT Journal, 50, 4, 279.

To see how readers responded to this topic online, go to

http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/f-is-for-focus-on-form-2/