Focus on Form in Task-Based Language Teaching Michaelh
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FOCUS ON FORM IN TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING MICHAELH. LoNG University of Hawai,i at Manoa oiven adequate opportunities, older children, adorescents, and adults can and do ream much ofan L2 grammar incidenurry, whilc focusing on mcaning, or communicarion. Research shows, however, rhar a on meuu,g alonc (a) locus is insuflicienr to achieve full native-rike compctence, and (b) can be improved upon, in terms of both mte and urtimatc attainment, by periodic anention to language as object. ln crassroom senings, this is best achieved not by a retum to discrete-point grammar teaching, or what I call/bcus on fbrns, where cruses sgrnd most of their time working on isolared linguisric structures in a sequence predetermined extematty by a syllabus designer or texlbook writer. Rather. during an otherwise meaning-focused lesson, and using a variety ofpedagogic procedures, learnen, attention is briefly shifted to linguistic code features, in conlext, when studens experience problems as they work on communicative task, i.e., in a sequence detcrmincd by their own internal syllabuses, current processing capacity, and leamability constraints. This is what I calllocus onform.Focus on form is one ofseveral methodological principles in Task-Based Language Teaching. The absence of either a widely accepted theory of language leaming or a solid empirical base for classroom practice has rendered language teaching wlnerable to some drastic pendulum swings offashion over the years, the coming and going ofvarious unconventional and unlamented "wonder Methods" being an obvious example. This has even been true with respect to perhaps the most basic question of all, and one which inevitably affects the way a course designer approaches the thomy issue of grammar in the communicative classroom: Is teaching a new language more srlccessful when the main focus is the L2 as object or the L2 as a medium of communication while students are leaming something else, like the history, culture, or geography of a society where the L2 is spoken? Histories of language teaching (e.g., Howatt, 1984; Musumechi, 1997) show that this debate, like so many others in the field, has been continuing for centuries. In this brief paper, I will anempt to do three things: (a) point out some limitations of both these approaches, (b) describe a third option-/o cus on form-which dbals with the L2 as object, including grammar, but within an otherwise communicative classroom, and (c) illustrate the role focus on form plays in one kind of communicative program: Task- Based Language Teaching. IJniversity of Hawai'i Workint Papers tu ESI, Vol. 16, No. 2, Spring 1998, t'p. 35a9. 36 LONG basic options for L2 Simplifying somewhat, Figure I illustratcs what I see as three focus on forms (with an course design in general, and for teaching grammar in particular: s). focus on meaning, and focus on form' Ootion 2 Ootion 3 Ootion I oralytic oslytic tyttir,llc hcus on mcaiag bcu on form focrs on fornS WaY, TPR Nanral Approach lBLT GT, Al-tvt, Silcnt Immersion Con&ol-Btlcd LT(?) Pmccdual Syllabus Procc* Syllabu(?) Sfuctrd/N-F Syllabuscs AE. Gtc. ctc. Figure l. Options in language teaching Option It Focus on lorms optionlistodayconsideredthetaditionalapproach,althoughithasnotalwaysbeen The teacher or viewed that way. Coursc desigr starts with tlrc language to b€ taught' (rhonemes, words, textbook writer divides thc L2 into scgmcnts of various kinds and collocations, morphemes, s€ntence pattems, notions, functions' tones' strcss one inronation patterns, and so on), and presents these to the leamer in nodels, initially intuitive) notions of item at a time, in a sequence determined by (rather vague, usually it frequency, valency, or (the all-purposc and qucstion-begging) "difficulty." Eventually, is the learner's job to synthesize thc parts for use in communication, which is why just wilkins (1976) called this the syz thetic apvoach to syllabus design. It is not the syllabus that is synthetic in this approach, however. Leamers are typically encouraged to master each linguistic item in synthetic syllabuses one at a time, to native speaker levels using synthetic materials, methodologjr, and pedagogy. Synthetic syllabi (lexical' structural, and notional-firnctional, for example), are accompanied by synthetic "methods" (Grammar Translation, ALM, Audio-Visual Method, Silent Way, Noisy I''OCUS oN I.'ORM IN TASK.BAST:D LANGUAGE T'EA(HING 37 Method, TPR, etc.), and by the synthetic classroom devices and practices commonly associated with them (e.g., explicit gramm.u rules, repetition of models, memorization of short dialogs, linguistically "simplified" texts, transformation exercises, explicit negative feedback, i.e., so-called "error correction", and display questions). Together, they result in lessons with what I call a focus on forms. Focus on forms lessons tend to be rather dry, consisting principally of work on the linguistic items, which students are expected to .,error.,' master one at a time, often to native speaker levels, with anything less treated as and little if any communicative L2 use. Focus on forms suffers from at least six major problems: I . There is no needs analysis to identi! a particular learner's or group of leamers, communicative needs, and no means analysis to ascertain their learning styles and preferences. It is a one-size-fits-atl approach. This usually results in teaching too much-some language, skills, and genres leamers do not need-and too little-nor covering language, skills, and genres they do need. This is discouraging ro students and ineffrcient. 2. l,inguistic grading, both lexical and grammatical, tends to result in pedagogic materials of the basal reader variety-"See Spot run! Run, spot, run!"-and textbook dialogs and classroom language use which are arti{icial and stilted-"Hello, Mary. Hello, John. Are you a student? Yes, I'm a student. What are you doing? I'm reading a book, etc."----captured nicely in David Nunan's example of simplified Shakespeare-"Stab, Hamlet, stab!", and in classroom input that is functionally restricted and "impoverished" in various ways. In other words, a focus on forms often leads to what Widdowson (1972) called language sag'e, not to realistic models of language use. "Simplification" is also self-defeating in that it srlcceeds in improving comprehension by removing from the input the new items learners need to encounter for the purposes of acquisition. (lnprut elaboration can usually achieve comparable comprehension gains without this disadvantage and without bleeding a text semantically. See, e.g., Long & Ross, 1993.) 3. Focus on forms ignores language leaming processes altogethel or else tacitly assumes a long discredited behaviorist model. Of the scorcs ofdetailed studies of naturalistic, classroom, and mixed L2 leaming reported over the past 30 yehrs, none suggests anything but an accidental resemblance between the way leamers acquire an L2 and the way a focus on forms assumes they do, e.g., between the order in which they learn L2 forms and the sequence in which those forms appear in extbmally imposed linguistic syllabuses. Synthetic syllabuses ignore rcsearch findings such as those showing that leaming new words or rules is rarely, if ever, a dne-time, categorical 38 LONG stages' as well as the fact that event. and that leamers pass through developmental to master separately are often many ofthe Brget items students are expected (1988) noted' SLA is not a inextricably bound up with other items' As Rutherford what a focus on forms assumes' process of accumulating entities' Yet that is precisely the major role they will play in 4. L"urring learners out of syllabus design igrores (1989) and Lightbown language development, nonetheless' Research by R' Ellis instructional ltlil;. for example, shows that acquisition sequences do not reflect (see Spada & Lightbown' 1993)' sequences, and while results are more mixed here and others suggests that work by Pienemann (1984 and elsewhere), Mackey (1995)' teachabilityisconstrainedbyleamability.Theideathatwhatyouteachiswhatthey just simplistic' it is wrong' leam, and when you teach it is when they leam it' is not 5. Despitethebesteffortsevenofhighlyskilledteachersandtextbookwriters,focuson formstendstoproduceboringlessons,withresultingdeclinesinmotivation' attention, and student enrollments. 6. Theassertionthatmanystudentsalloverthewolldhaveleamedlanguagesviaafocus onformsignoresthepossibilitythattheyhavereallylearneddespiteit(studiesof human capacity for language acquisition in abnormal environments have found the fact that countless others language acquisition to be highly resilient), as well as the havefailed'Afocusonformsproducesmanymorefalsebeginnersthanftnishers. Option 2: Focus on meaning swing: a A typical response to frustration with option I has been a radical pendulum This shift of allegiance to option 2, and an equally single-minded focus on meaning. and others, position is implicir in much of the writing of corder, Felix, wode, Allwright, programs in in Prabhu's procedural syllabus, in part of the rationale for French immersion more canada, in Newmark and Reibel's Minimal Language Teaching Program, and recently in Krashen's ideas about sheltered subject-matter teaching, and Krashen and Tenell's Natural APProach. Unlike option l, the starting point in option 2 is not the language, bul the learner and leaming processes. while the rationales and terminology have differed greatly, advocates of Option 2 typically invoke one or more ofthe following in support oftheir proposals: (a) the alleged