Focus on form (FonF), also calledform-focused instruction, is an approach tolanguage education in which learners are made aware of linguistic forms – such as individual words and conjugations – in the context of a communicative activity. It is contrasted withfocus on forms,[1] in which forms are studied in isolation, andfocus onmeaning, in which no attention is paid to forms at all. For instruction to qualify asfocus on form and not asfocus on forms, the learner must be aware of the meaning and use of the language features before the form is brought to their attention.[2]Focus on form was proposed byMichael Long in 1988.[3]
The concept offocus on form was motivated by the lack of support for the efficacy offocus on forms on the one hand, and clear advantages demonstrated by instructed language learning over uninstructed learning on the other.[3] The research conflicting withfocus on forms has been wide-ranging;[4] learners typically acquire language features insequences, not all at once,[5] and most of the stages the learners'interlanguages pass through will exhibit non-native-like language forms.[6] Furthermore, the progression of these stages is not clean; learners may use language features correctly in some situations but not in others,[7] or they may exhibitU-shaped learning, in which native-like use may temporarily revert to non-native-like use.[8] None of these findings sit well with the idea that students will learn exactly what you teach them, when you teach it.[4]
In a review of the literature comparing instructed with uninstructed language learning, Long found a clear advantage for instructed learning in both the rate of learning and the ultimate level reached.[3] An important finding that supported Long's view came fromFrenchlanguage immersion programs inCanada; even after students had years of meaning-focused lessons filled with comprehensible input, their spoken language remained far from native-like, with many grammatical errors. This is despite the fact that they could speak fluently and had native-like listening abilities.[9]
^abcLong 1991. This paper was originally presented at the European-North-American Symposium on Needed Research in Foreign Language Education, Bellagio, Italy, in 1988.
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Long, Michael; Robinson, Peter (1998). "Focus on form: Theory, research and practice". In Doughty, Catherine; Williams, Jessica (eds.).Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 15–41.ISBN978-0-521-62390-2.
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Swain, Merrill (1991). "French immersion and its offshoots: Getting two for one". In Freed, Barbara (ed.).Foreign language acquisition research and the classroom. Lexington, MA: Heath. pp. 91–103.ISBN978-0-669-24263-8.
Young, R. (1988). "Variation and the Interlanguage Hypothesis".Studies in Second Language Acquisition.10 (3):281–302.doi:10.1017/S0272263100007464.
