Doing Focus on Form

System 30 (2002) 419–432 www.elsevier.com/locate/system Doing focus-on-form
Rod Ellis*, Helen Basturkmen, Shawn Loewen
Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019,
Auckland, New Zealand
Received 17 April 2002; received in revised form 14 June 2002; accepted 17 June 2002

Abstract
‘Focus-on-form’ refers to a particular type of form-focused instruction - the treatment of linguistic form in the context of performing a communicative task. This article considers the rationale for this approach to teaching form as opposed to the more traditional ‘focus-on-forms’ approach where linguistic features are treated sequentially. It describes some of the main methodological options for attending to form in communication. These are considered under two main headings; ‘reactive focus-on-form’ and ‘pre-emptive focus-on-form’. The advantages and disadvantages of the various options are also discussed. Finally, some general questions relating to the practice of focus-on-form are identified as a basis for further discussion and research.
# 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Language instruction; Communicative tasks; Focus-on-form

1. Introduction
The teaching of linguistic forms,1 especially grammar, continues to occupy a major place in language pedagogy. Discussions of how to teach form usually consist of accounts of the various pedagogical options available to the teacher and the relative advantages of each option (see, e.g. Ellis, 1997). Somewhat less attention has been paid to the actual methodological procedures that teachers use to focus on
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: r.ellis@auckland.ac.nz (R. Ellis), h.basturkmen@auckland.ac.nz (H. Basturkmen),
s.loewen@auckland.ac.nz (S. Loewen).
1
The term ‘form’ is often used to refer exclusively to ‘grammar’. However, in this article it is used more generally to refer to any aspect of linguistic form—phonological, graphological, lexical or grammatical. It should also be noted that the term ‘form’ does not exclude considerations of meaning. While it is possible to attend solely to form, as for example when the pronunciation of an isolated word becomes the focus, in many cases attention to form involves consideration of the meaning (function) that a particular form conveys.
0346-251X/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0346-251X(02)00047-7

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form in the course of their actual teaching (but see Borg, 1998). Given the growing importance that is being attached to teaching form in the context of communicative activity (see the articles in Doughty and Williams, 1998), the procedures for achieving this deserve careful consideration. Arguably, initial training courses for teachers need to ensure that teachers are equipped with the skills needed to focus students’ attention on form and that they have an understanding of the potential advantages and disadvantages of the different procedures involved.
The purpose of this article is to first define what is meant by ‘focus on form’ and to provide a brief rationale for this approach to teaching form. Second, it is to offer a description of some of the key procedures for dealing with form by drawing on actual examples of the procedures used by experienced teachers. A third purpose is to point out some of the issues that are problematic to provide a basis for discussion and research.

2. Some definitions
Table 1 shows a number of basic approaches for handling form-focused instruction.
Each of these approaches is briefly defined and an example of each provided. Following
Long (1991), two kinds of form-focused instruction can be distinguished—focus-onforms and focus-on-form. The former involves the pre-selection of specific features based on a linguistic syllabus and the intensive and systematic treatment of those features. Thus, in focus-on-forms instruction the primary focus of attention is on the form that is being targeted. A good example of a focus-on-forms lesson is one conducted by means of ‘PPP’ (i.e. a three stage lesson involving the presentation of a grammatical structure, its practice in controlled exercises and the provision of opportunities to produce it freely). In contrast, in focus-on-form instruction the primary focus of attention is on meaning. The attention to form arises out of meaning-centred activity derived from the performance of a communicative task.
For example, students might be asked to perform an information-gap task and in the course of doing so have their attention drawn to one or more linguistic forms which are needed to perform the activity or that are causing the students problems.
Two types of focus-on-form instruction can be distinguished; planned focus-onform and incidental focus-on-form. The former involves the use of focused tasks, i.e. communicative tasks that have been designed to elicit the use of a specific linguistic form in the context of meaning-centred language use. In this case, then, the focuson-form is pre-determined. For example, a same-or-different task could be used to
Table 1
Types of form-based instruction
Type

Syllabus

Primary focus

Distribution

1. Focus-on-forms
2. Planned focus-on-form
3. Incidental focus-on-form

Structural
Task-based
Task-based

Form
Meaning
Meaning

Intensive
Intensive
Extensive

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present pairs of pictures which would necessitate learners using ‘at’ and ‘in’ (the target forms) in order to determine whether the pictures are the same or different.
This type of focus-on-form instruction is similar to focus-on-forms instruction in that a specific form is pre-selected for treatment but it differs from it in two key respects. First, the attention to form occurs in interaction where the primary focus is on meaning. Second, the learners are not made aware that a specific form is being targeted and thus are expected to function primarily as ‘language users’ rather than as ‘learners’ when they perform the task.
Incidental focus-on-form involves the use of unfocused tasks, i.e. communicative tasks designed to elicit general samples of the language rather than specific forms.
Such tasks can be performed without any attention to form whatsoever. However, it is also possible that the students and teacher will elect to incidentally attend to various forms while performing the task. In this case, of course, attention to form will be extensive rather than intensive—that is, many different forms are likely to be treated briefly rather than a single form addressed many times. For example, while performing an opinion-gap task, students might make a number of different errors which the teacher corrects or students might feel the need to ask the teacher about a particular form, such as the meaning of a key word they do not know.
It should be noted that whether focus on form is planned or incidental is not so much a matter of the task that is used as the teacher’s orientation to the task. Both types of focus on form require the use of a communicative task. In the case of planned focus-on-form, the teacher elects to use a task to target a specific linguistic feature and this then influences how the task is performed in the classroom. In the case of incidental focus on form, the forms attended to are not pre-determined but arise naturally out of the performance of the task. Even when the focus on form is planned, incidental attention to a range of forms in addition to the targeted form can occur.

3. The rationale for focus-on-form instruction
Whereas learners are able to acquire linguistic forms without any instructional intervention, they typically do not achieve very high levels of linguistic competence from entirely meaning-centred instruction. For example, students in immersion programmes in Canada fail to acquire such features as verb tense markings even after many years of study. This had led second language acquisition researchers such as Swain (1995) to propose that learners need to do more than to simply engage in communicative language use; they also need to attend to form.
The question then arises as to how best to induce this attention to form. While there is substantial evidence that focus-on-forms instruction results in learning as measured by discrete-point language tests (e.g. the grammar test in the TOEFL), there is much less evidence to show that it leads to the kind of learning that enables learners to perform the targeted form in free oral production (e.g. in a communicative task). Norris and Ortega (2000) reviewed 49 studies, mainly of the focus-on-forms kind, and found that the effectiveness of the instruction was markedly reduced when

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this was measured in terms of learners’ ability to use the targeted structure spontaneously in communication.
This has led some researchers (e.g. Long, 1991; Doughty, 2001) to suggest that an approach based on focus-on-form would work better. The argument they advance rests on the following premises:
1. To acquire the ability to use new linguistic forms communicatively, learners need the opportunity to engage in meaning-focused language use (see Prabhu,
1987).
2. However, such opportunity will only guarantee full acquisition of the new linguistic forms if learners also have the opportunity to attend to form while engaged in meaning-focused language use. Long (1991) argues that only in this way can attention to form be made compatible with the immutable processes that characterize L2 acquisition and thereby overcome persistent developmental errors.
3. Given that learners have a limited capacity to process the second language
(L2) and have difficulty in simultaneously attending to meaning and form they will prioritize meaning over form when performing a communicative activity (VanPatten, 1990).
4. For this reason, it is necessary to find ways of drawing learners’ attention to form during a communicative activity. As Doughty (2001) notes ‘the factor that distinguishes focus on form from other pedagogical approaches is the requirement that focus on form involves learners’ briefly and perhaps simultaneously attending to form, meaning and use during one cognitive event’ (p. 211).
This rationale is applicable to both planned and incidental focus-on-form.
Planned focus-on-form is effective because it focuses learners repeatedly on the same form while they are communicating. There is evidence to show that it promotes acquisition, even when this is measured in terms of spontaneous oral production. Doughty and Varela (1998), for example, provided reactive focus-on-form directed at past tense verbs in the context of students’ producing oral and written science reports. The reactive focus-on-form consisted of ‘corrective recasting’, where the teacher first repeated a learner utterance containing a past tense error, highlighting the error through emphasis, and then, if this did not result in a learner selfcorrection, the teacher recast the utterance using the correct verb form. The students showed posttest gains in written and oral science report tasks, which were largely maintained over time. However, planned focus-on-form of the kind illustrated in
Doughty and Varela’s study is time consuming. Whole lessons (even series of lessons) need to be devoted to a single form. In this respect, it is like focus-on-forms.
In contrast, incidental focus-on-form is able to focus attention on a whole range of forms in a single lesson. Thus, it affords a broad coverage. A concern, though, is that each form is attended to only very briefly, which may not be sufficient to guarantee acquisition. Little is currently known about the acquisitional outcomes of incidental focus-on-form. However, a recent study by Loewen (2002) suggests that learners can benefit from incidental focus-on-form. Loewen identified numerous

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episodes where the classroom participants attended to form in communicative lessons.
He then designed tailor made post-tests to establish whether individual students involved in specific episodes had benefited from them. In tests administered between one and three days after the lessons, the students were able to recognize or supply the correct form either completely or partially 62.4% of the time; in tests administered 2 weeks later they scored 55.6% for correct or partially correct responses.
Loewen’s study is important because it indicates that (1) in some communicative classes, at least, incidental-focus-on-form is common and (2) it is followed by subsequent correct use of the forms attended to.
In the sections that follow we will describe how focus-on-form can be accomplished methodologically by describing the various options available to teachers and students.2 Our aim is not to suggest that this is what teachers should do but rather to describe some of the main options we have observed experienced teachers to employ.

4. Reactive focus-on-form
Reactive focus-on-form involves the treatment of learner errors. There is a large literature dealing with this topic (see, e.g. Seedhouse, 1997) but by and large this does not clearly distinguish between error treatment in focus-on-forms instruction and in focus-on-form instruction. Many of the strategies used to address learner errors in these two types of instruction may be similar but there are also likely to be some differences. The strategies described below are illustrated with examples taken from a number of different sources but in particular from a study by Ellis et al.
(1999) that investigated how teachers of adult ESL students focus on form in communicative language teaching.
4.1. Conversational vs. didactic focus-on-form
The linguistic errors that students make during a communicative activity may or may not result in a communication problem. In Example 1 the student’s error clearly does cause a communicative problem, resulting in the teacher addressing this by negotiating meaning. Student 1, whose name is Bess, wants to tell the teacher that her group has given itself the name ‘Best Group’. However, the teacher mishears and thinks the name is ‘Bess’ Group’. This results in student 1 paying closer attention to her pronunciation in order to clarify the name. In Example 2, two students are performing a role play with student 1 acting as a guest and student 2 as a hotel receptionist. The teacher fails to understand Student’s 2 utterance and consequently requests clarification (‘What?’) causing the student to reformulate it using a contraction (I’ll) in place of the original full form (will). It was conversational focus-on-form of the kind illustrated in Examples 1 and 2 that Long (1991) originally had in mind. Long
2
All the options we describe are found in ‘Focus-on-form’ instruction. It should be noted, however, that several of the reactive and pre-emptive focus-on-form options also occur in instruction of the ‘focuson-forms’ kind.

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argued that the attention to form that arises as a result of a communication problem is likely to be particularly salient to learners because it helps them to make their meaning clear. Salience and communicative need, both evident in conversational focus-on-form, constitute the ideal conditions for noticing and acquisition to take place. Teachers can negotiate meaning conversationally using either requests for confirmation or requests for clarification. A request for confirmation typically involves the teacher repeating the problematic utterance with or without reformulating it. In
Example 1, the teacher asks the student to confirm that she has heard the name of the group correctly. A request for clarification is typically used when the teacher does not have a clear idea of what the student has said. It is performed formulaically by means of expressions such as ‘Sorry?’ and ‘Could you say that again?’ There is a major difference between these two ways of accomplishing meaning negotiation. In the case of a request for confirmation, students only need to reformulate their own utterances if it is clear that the teacher has not understood correctly. This is the case in Example 1, where the student repeats ‘best’, improving her pronunciation. However, in many instances, the teacher’s confirmation is correct and the communication proceeds without students needing to adjust the utterance that caused the problem.
In contrast, a request for clarification places the onus on the student for dealing with the problem and is more likely to lead to a reformulation of the problem utterance as in Example 2.
Example 1: Conversational focus-on-form (request for confirmation)
S: my group has a name
T: what name?
S1: best
T: Bess’ group?
S1: best
T: oh, best, okay
S2: best
T: best, not group three, the best, that’s a lovely name
Example 2: Conversational focus-on-form (request for clarification)
S1: I’m look for a room, or
S2: I will take you
T: what?
S2: I’ll take you
Often, however, a student error does not cause any communication problem but the teacher still elects to correct it. In Example 3, the student leaves out the definite article ‘the’. The teacher has no difficulty in understanding him but focuses attention on the error by correcting the utterance. The focus-on-form episode that results from this type of error treatment constitutes a kind of pedagogic ‘time-out’ from

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meaning-focussed communication and for this reason can be considered ‘didactic’. It involves a ‘negotiation of form’ rather than a ‘negotiation of meaning’. It is possible that students do not notice the target of such negotiation as no meaning is at stake.
There is no evidence in Example 3 that the student has paid attention to the teacher’s feedback. Ellis et al. (1999) found that didactic focus-on-form was far more common than conversational in communicative ESL lessons involving adult learners.
Example 3: Didactic focus-on-form
S: I was in pub
(2.0)
S: I was in pub
T: in the pub?
S: yeah and I was drinking beer

4.2. Implicit vs. explicit focus on form
Corrective feedback can be implicit or explicit. The most common way of performing implicit feedback is by means of a recast. This consists of a reformulation of either the whole or part of the student’s utterance containing an error in such a way as to maintain the student’s intended meaning. Often, but not always, a recast performs the function of requesting confirmation. For example, the teacher uses a recast in Example 3. One problem with recasts, as may be the case in this example, is that the student may fail to notice the difference between his/her own utterance and the recast. This is because the corrective function of a recast is not always apparent.
Teachers often repeat all or part of a student utterance to show they are following and to encourage the student to continue. To ensure attention to form it may be necessary to make the feedback less implicit. Doughty and Varela (1998) suggest how this might be done in the context of planned focus-on-form where students are receiving feedback on oral reports of science experiments they have carried out.
They required the teacher first to repeat the student utterance highlighting the error through stress and rising intonation. Then, if the student fails to respond with a selfcorrection, the teacher followed up with a recast. Example 4 illustrates this procedure. One disadvantage is that the resulting feedback is much more intrusive, potentially distracting from the communicative flow. The interaction in Example 4 sounds much more ‘pedagogic’ than that in Example 3.
Example 4: Implicit focus-on-form by means of a recast
S: I think that the worm will go under the soil.
T: I think the worm will go under the soil?
S: (no response)
T: I thought that the worm would go under the soil.
S: I thought that the worm would go under the soil.

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Explicit feedback can be performed in a number of ways. The simplest is to simply signal quite directly that the student has made an error (e.g. by saying ‘No.
Not ___.’). However, as Seedhouse (1997) has shown teachers are reluctant to employ this option, presumably because it is perceived as sociolinguistically risky—a threat to the student’s face. The teacher can also use metalanguage to indicate what is wrong with an utterance (e.g. ‘Tense’). Another option is to provide a correction and then provide opportunity for the student to practise the use of the correct form.
Example 5 illustrates this. Here S1 has a problem with the pronunciation of ‘found’.
The teacher corrects him, making her purpose plain by saying ‘watch me’. The student attempts to pronounce the word on two more occasions and is again corrected. The teacher models the vowel sound required and further practice follows before finally the student gets it right. The communicative activity then proceeds. Still another option is to intervene with a metalinguistic explanation of the correct form. Explicit correction has the advantage of making it more or less impossible for the student to avoid noticing the correct form. However, as Example 5 shows, it runs the risk of turning a communicative task into a language-getting activity.
Example 5: Explicit focus-on-form
S1: was anything found by his body
S2: pardon
S1: was anything found, fou, fou
T: watch me, watch me, found
S1: found
T: found
S1: found
T: found
S1: found
T:, ow, ow, found
S1: found
T: found
S: found
T: found yeah
S1: found by his body
It is clear from this account of implicit and explicit corrective feedback that the distinction represents a continuum rather than a dichotomy. That is, reactive focuson-form can be more or less implicit/explicit. It is possible that teachers vary their choice of feedback option depending on their assessment of the student’s ability to attend to the form being corrected. If they think that the student already knows what the correct form is and is capable of identifying the error for him/herself they may opt for a very implicit form of feedback (e.g. a recast) but if they think that the student does not know the form or will have difficulty in identifying what the error is they are more likely to choose an explicit form of feedback (e.g. a metalingual explanation). Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) illustrate this process of varying corrective

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feedback in the context of writing conferences where a tutor goes over students’ written compositions with them.

5. Pre-emptive focus-on-form
Missing almost entirely from current accounts of focus-on-form is any consideration of pre-emptive focus-on-form. This consists of attempts by the students or the teacher to make a particular form the topic of the conversation even though no error (or perceived error) in the use of that form has occurred.3 Like reactive focus-on-form, pre-emptive focus on form can be conversational (i.e. motivated by communicative need) or didactic. In Ellis et al. (1999) study, however, it was almost invariably didactic in nature. That is, the participants took time-out from communicating to topicalize some linguistic feature or item as an object. In this study, pre-emptive focus-on-form occurred as frequently as reactive focus-on-form, suggesting that in some classrooms at least it is a common phenomenon.
Student pre-emptive focus-on-form is typically initiated by means of a query that the student addresses to the teacher. In Example 6, the student wants to explain that she uses ‘translation’ as a strategy for learning vocabulary but she cannot recall the word. Thus she uses the communication strategy of ‘requesting assistance’ and eventually, after supplying various rather ineffectual clues, is successful in eliciting the lexical form she wants from the teacher. Sometimes, the teacher elects not to answer the student query herself but to re-direct it at the class to see if another student can supply an answer. On other occasions (although rarely in Ellis et al.’s study) the teacher elects not to answer a student query at all, sometimes indicating that she will address it later.
The advantage of student-initiated preemptive focus-on-form is that it addresses gaps in the students’ linguistic knowledge which can be presumed to be significant to them (for otherwise why would they ask?) and which they are therefore strongly motivated to try to fill. Slimani (1989) found that learners were more likely to recall new items if these had been used in episodes which they themselves had initiated.
Her study suggests that learner topicalisation of form can promote language acquisition. A disadvantage of student-initiated attention to form, however, is that it can detract from the communicative activity. This is one reason why teachers may decline to answer a student query. However, it might be argued that the kind of lexical search illustrated in Example 6 is a feature of authentic communication as it occurs in non-classroom settings. A more serious disadvantage is that what is a gap for one student may not be for others, who thus may gain little or nothing from listening to the teacher address another student’s query.
3
One of the reviewers of a draft of this article suggests that pre-emptive focus-on-form is very close to focus-on-forms instruction. This misses the point, however, that pre-emptive focus-on-form, by definition, occurs in activities where there is a primary focus on meaning. Of course, there can also be pre-emptive focus-on-form directed at the pre-targeted form of the lesson in focus-on-forms instruction. The crucial difference is the context of the pre-emptive attention to form.

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Example 6: Student-initiated pre-emptive focus-on-form
S: T, how do you < >
T: what?
S: English and? (2) the only word?
T: the other language?
S: yes, the < onway > language, how?
T: I don’t know, what was the other language?
S: no, no s-, I’m saying this um, con-, conT: translation?
S: translation, thank you
T: translation, yeah
S: translation, conlation (laughs) ah
T: and the translation, good
Teachers also interrupt the flow of a communicative activity to raise a specific form to attention. In so doing they are electing to disrupt the meaning-centredness of an activity, presumably because they calculate that this is justified on the grounds that the form in question will be problematic to the students in some way. Teacher-initiated focus-onform is initiated either by a query directed at the students or by an advisory statement.
Example 7 illustrates the former. Here the teacher is setting up a communicative activity where the students have to construct an alibi for a crime. She begins by checking to see if they know the meaning of alibi. Teacher queries are often directed at the meaning of lexical items that crop up in an activity. The use of an advisory statement is illustrated in Example 8. Here the teacher is drawing the students’ attention to the need to use going to in their written compositions An advisory statement, therefore, sensitizes learners to pay attention to forms that are potentially problematic when they produce them in their own output or encounter them in input. In Ellis et al.
(1999) advisory statements were generally directed at grammatical forms.
Teachers probably vary enormously in the extent to which they engage in teacherinitiated focus-on-form, reflecting their orientation to a communicative task. In some cases they hardly interject at all, preferring to maintain the communicative flow of the task. Other teachers intervene frequently, presumably because they feel the need to manufacture explicit learning opportunities out of the communication that evolves from a task. One problem with this is that they cannot know for sure whether the gaps they assume to exist in the students’ knowledge are actual gaps. If learners already know the forms the teacher raises to attention little is gained. In this respect, student-initiated preemptive focus-on-form is to be preferred. It might be argued, then, that teachers would do better to limit themselves to providing corrective feedback (i.e. to reactive focus-on-form), where the need for their assistance is clear.
Example 7: Teacher initiated focus-on-form (using a query)
T: what’s an alibi?
(4.0)

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T: M has an alibi
(3.0)
T: another name for girlfriend?
(laughter)
(4.5)
T: an alibi is a reason you have for not being at the bank robbery (.) okay (.) not being at the bank robbery
Example 8: Teacher-initiated focus-on-form (using an advisory statement)
T: okay, now remember this is your plan, so ‘I’m going to, I’m going to..’

6. Summary
Table 2 provides a summary of the different options for accomplishing focus-onform. These options are not ‘either-ors’. That is, any single communicative lesson

Table 2
Principal focus-on-form options
Options

Description

A. Reactive focus-on-form

The teacher or another student responds to an error that a student makes in the context of a communicative activity.

1. Negotiation
a. Conversational

The response to the error is triggered by a failure to understand what the student meant. It involves ‘negotiation of meaning’.

b. Didactic

The response occurs even though no breakdown in communication has taken place; it constitutes a ‘time-out’ from communicating. It involves
‘negotiation of form’.

2. Feedback
a. Implicit feedback

The teacher or another student responds to a student’s error without directly indicating an error has been made, e.g. by means of a recast.

b. Explicit feedback

The teacher or another student responds to a student’s error by directly indicating that an error has been made, e.g. by formally correcting the error or by using metalanguage to draw attention to it.

B. Pre-emptive focus-on-form

The teacher or a student makes a linguistic form the topic of the discourse even though no error has been committed.

1. Student initiated

A student asks a question about a linguistic form.

2. Teacher-initiated

The teacher gives advice about a linguistic form he/she thinks might be problematic or asks the students a question about the form.

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may involve several or all of these options. It is our experience that teachers are often not aware of the extent to which they draw attention to form during a communicative activity, possibly because the focus-on-form episodes are typically very brief. 7. Conclusion
There are now strong theoretical reasons for claiming that the teacher’s role in a communicative task should not be limited to that of communicative partner. The teacher also needs to pay attention to form. This article has suggested a number of ways in which this can be accomplished. Teachers in training need to develop a repertoire of options for addressing form in the context of communicative teaching. There are, however, many questions for which clear answers are not yet available.
These include:
1. To what extent should teachers engage in focus-on-form?
A communicative language lesson has a dual purpose—to improve the students’ fluency and confidence in using the target language and to help them build their linguistic competence. By restricting the amount of attention to form the teacher can ensure the first of these purposes is achieved but at the expense of the second. By regularly focussing on form the teacher can create the conditions that promote the acquisition of language but runs the risk of inhibiting student fluency. It is sometimes recommended that teachers make a note of forms that cause students problems during a communicative activity and address them when it is over. However, this ignores one of the key reasons for employing focus-on-form, namely to make learners aware of specific forms at the time they need to use them.
2. Should focus-on-form be conversational or didactic?
This is related to the preceding question. Conversational focus-on-form belongs naturally to communicative activity as it provides the means for solving communication difficulties whenever these arise. However, didactic form is the product of the classroom context; it reflects the fact that even when performing communicative activities the classroom participants are motivated to teach/learn the language. Given that many communicative activities do not result in much negotiation-of-meaning, didactic focus-on-form may be needed to provide sufficient opportunities for students to attend to form. But such activity can endanger the ‘communicativeness’ of an activity.
3. Should focus-on-form be implicit or explicit?
Again, this concerns whether the orientation to an activity is to be entirely communicative, in which case implicit focus-on-form is appropriate, or more pedagogic, when explicit focus-on-form becomes acceptable. Students are more likely to notice the form that is being addressed if the focus is made explicit.
4. Should teachers pre-empt attention to form during a communicative activity?

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Teacher pre-emption of form is probably the option most likely to disrupt the communicative flow. It tells the students that the teacher is really concerned about form rather than meaning. Also, the forms teachers pre-empt may not constitute actual gaps in the students’ L2 knowledge. Nevertheless, there may be occasions when the teacher pre-empting form is useful (e.g. when students are planning a communicative activity).
5. What role is there for student-initiated attention to form?
Students, especially motivated adult students, are likely to ask questions about form during the course of a communicative activity. How should the teacher deal with them? There are three possibilities—answer them immediately, ignore them, or deflect them (i.e. until later). Clearly, the strategy a teacher adopts needs to be informed by social as well as psycholinguistic considerations. Teachers cannot afford to antagonize their students by refusing to address their questions but equally whatever they do must be motivated by a concern for what will aid learning.
This article has addressed the teacher’s role in focusing on form during communicative language lessons. It might be argued that this is of limited importance given that communicative tasks are typically performed by students working in groups.
There are, however, doubts about whether communicative group work produces much attention to form as discussed in this article. Williams (1999) found little evidence of it in elementary and intermediate level learners, except when the teacher joined a group. If focus-on-form is as important as has been claimed, then, it would seem to require the interventions of the teacher.

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