English Language Teaching in its Social Context

FOCUS ON FORM 183classrooms are useful to the extent that they provide sheltered linguistic environmcnts forbeginners, but that it does not help for teachers to focus on linguistic form. An inferencethat could easily be drawn from such interpretations is that there are only two options inthis area of coursc design: either (1 ) a linear, additive syllabus and methodology whosecontent and focus is a series of isolated linguistic forms (sound contrasts, lexical items,structures, speech acts, notions, etc.), or (2) a program with no overt focus on linguisticforms at all. While this turns out to be a false dichotomy,fcus onform is a potentiallyimportant design feature for distinguishing instructional methodologies and settings.Focus onform is a feature which reveals an underlying similarity among a variety of(a) teaching “methods”, e.g. ALM, TPR, Grammar Translation and Silent Way, (b) syllabustypes, e.g. structural, notional-functional, lexical, and (c) program types, e.g. submersion,imrncrsion, sheltered subject-matter, which on the surface appear to differ greatly. Groups(a) and (b) all utilize an overt focus on form; Group (c) does not. It also allowsgeneralizations across traditional boundaries, identifying a link between the program typesin group (c) and in theory, at least, a linguistically non-isolating teaching “method”, suchas the Natural Approach (Krashen and Terrell 1983). At the classroom process level,techniques, procedures, exercises and pedagogic tasks can also be categorized as to whetheror not they either permit or require a focus on form. Display questions, repetition drillsand error correction, for example, all overtly focus students on form; referential questions,true/false exercises and two-way tasks do not. Finally, while many potentially relevantdesign features will distinguish some methods, syllabi, tasks and tests from others, few havethe valency of focus on form. It appears to be a parameter one value or another of whichcharacterizes almost all language teaching options.Five caveats are in order. First, it is not being suggested that whether or not a programtype, syllabus, method, task or test focuses on form is the only relevant design characteristicor that important differences will not exist among members of groups which share the feature,and vice versa. Second, while most programs, syllabi, methods, tasks and tests either do or donot overtly focus on form, some within the former group differ in the degree to which theyisolate linguistic structures, not to mention as to how they do so; there are, in other words,relative as well as absolute, within-group as well as inter-group, differences.Third, it is likelythat students will often focus on form when teachers or materials designers intcnd them notto, and ignore form whcn they are supposed to concentrate on it. Fourth, some degree ofawarencss of form and a focus on meaning may not be mutually exclusive on some tasks (forreview, see Schmidt 1990). Fifth, the fact that the distinction can be made does not mean thatit should; whether it is important is a theoretical and/or an empirical matter.Focus on form: a psycholinguistic rationaleThc practice of isolating linguistic items, teaching and testing them one at a time, wasoriginally motivated by advances in behaviorist psychology and structuralist linguistics.Combined with the advcnt of a world war and a sudden need for fluent foreign languagespeakers, these events led to the growth of ALM and its many progeny. As distinct from afocus onform, to which we return below, structural syllabi, ALM, and variants thereofinvolve a focus onjrrns. That is to say, the content of the syllabus and of lessons based on itis the linguistic items themselves (structures, notions, lexical items, etc.); a lesson isdesigned to teach “the past continuous”, “requesting” and so on, nothing else.Arguments abound against making isolated linguistic structures the content of a FLcourse, that is, against a focus onjrms. Of the hundreds of studies of interlanguage (IL)