Page 205 - Beyond Methods

Activating intuitive heuristics 193 Reflective task 8.7
If you believe that grammar tasks are relevant for your learning and teach- ing context, what constraints do you anticipate in designing and using them in your class? Lack of resources? Lack of time? Lack of training? Some other restraint? And, how can you try to overcome some of the constraints?
PEDAGOGIC TASKS
Pedagogic tasks, like grammar discovery tasks, aim at input enhance- ment in terms of consciousness-raising and noticing the gap, but seek to achieve that aim in a very different way. Unlike grammar discov- ery tasks, which focus primarily and explicitly on the grammatical form, pedagogic tasks draw the learners’ attention to it if and only if it is absolutely necessary to carry out the communicative activities and negotiation of meaning in class.
In this context, Long and his colleagues (see Long, 1991, and Doughty and Williams, ed., 1998) make a distinction between focus on form and focus on formS (plural). The former refers to meaning- focused activities in which an attention to form is secondary and implicit, whereas the latter refers to grammar-focused activities in which an attention to form is primary and explicit. Focus on form “overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication” (Long, 1991, pp. 45–6). It entails a prerequisite engagement in meaning before attention to grammatical forms can be expected to be effective, that is, the meaning of an utterance must be evident to learners before their attention is drawn to the gram- matical features embedded in that utterance. It constitutes an occa- sional shift of attention to grammatical forms by teachers or learn- ers when they notice problems with comprehension or production (Long and Robinson, 1998, p. 23).
While stressing their preference for activities that focus on form over activities that focus on formS, Long and his colleagues stress that “focus on formS and focus on form are not polar opposites in the way that form and meaning have often been considered to be. Rather, focus on form entails a focus on formal elements of lan- guage; whereas focus on formS is limited to such a focus, and focus