Metalanguage in Focus on Form in the Communicative Classroom

Abstract

It has been observed that participants take time out during communicative activities to give attention to linguistic items arising incidentally within these contexts. This has been termed 'focus on form' (Long, 1991) and studies of classroom discourse have identified ways classroom participants focus on form reactively (Lyster & Ranta, 1997) and pre-emptively (Borg, 1998; Samuda, 2001). A number of general strategies have been identified in focus on form (e.g. recasts, clarification requests). However, previous studies have not identified the actual language used to accomplish focus on form. In this article, we investigate one aspect of language use in focus on form – metalanguage. We report on a study to identify how metalanguage was used and the relationship between the use of metalanguage and the occurrence of student uptake moves (that is, the subsequent use of the targeted linguistic item in student production) in focus on form.