The relationship between experience, education and teachers’ use of incidental focus-on-form techniques

Abstract

This paper reports the findings of an empirical study that explored whether ESL teachers’ use of incidental focus-on-form techniques was influenced by their level of experience. The results showed that experienced ESL teachers used more incidental focus-on-form techniques than inexperienced teachers. A follow-up study investigated whether inexperienced ESL teachers’ awareness and use of incidental focus-on-form techniques could be influenced by education, specifically, their participation in a teacher education workshop. Overall, the studies demonstrate the importance of taking experience and education into account in research on teacher-initiated incidental focus on form.