How to Focus on Form in Our Classes

Abstract

A current concern of applied linguistics is about the degree to which teachers need to direct learners’ attention to understanding grammar whilst retaining the focus on the principles of communicative language teaching and the need to communicate. On one hand, there are experts who advocate no interruption in communication and on the other hand there are those who advocate separate grammar instruction (Sheen, 2002). These two extremes were moderated by Long ( 1991 ) who made a distinction between “focus on form” and “focus on forms”. Thus focus-on-form instruction came into being which keeps the principles of communication at the core, and allows the teacher to interrupt only if form-based problems bring about communication misunderstandings and problems. The major points of debate include whether, how, and when we should integrate grammar instruction. In this article, experts’ orientations towards meaning-based and form-based instruction are reviewed, the problems of each orientation are discussed, and at the end some hints are suggested for teachers to consider when teaching language forms.