On the integration of form and meaning in English Language Teaching (ELT): An overview of current pedagogical options

Abstract

English Language Teaching (ELT) researchers and practitioners now unanimously approve that the current challenge of the field lies in the integration of form and meaning and the reconciliation of explicit and implicit approaches to teaching/learning of grammar. The debate about the interaction between explicit knowledge/learning and implicit knowledge/learning is known as the ‘interface issue’ under which three different positions on teaching grammar are subsumed: the ‘non-interface’ position, the ‘strong interface’ position, and the ‘weak interface’ position. Following a brief examination of the three positions, the study focuses on the ‘weak interface’ position and provides an overview of six major pedagogical options capitalising on this integrative view:a) Input processing (structured input)b) Textual enhancement (visual/typographical enhancement)c) Interactional feedbackd) Instructional conversation (prolepsis)e) Focused communicative tasksf) Discourse-based approaches