Focus on Form Approach in Grammar Teaching

This assignment delves into the 'Focus on Form' approach in teaching English grammar. It contrasts this method with the sequential focus on form, emphasizing the integrated nature of learning meaning and communication within the Focus on Form framework. The assignment further explores two models for implementing this approach: one with brief interventions and signals, the other with explicit instructions followed by communicative activities. A list of references provides additional insights into this pedagogical perspective.

Running head: GRAMMAR
Grammar
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Part 1:
Use of Corpora
In teaching grammar, the teachers tend to be more concerned regarding the negative
attributes within the students for grammar, as most of the students find grammar learning
boring and difficult. In the Srilankan school system, the module for grammar has improved
with the course of time and in the recent times it contains more substantial constituents using
the peer discussion and more activities regarding problem solving. Furthermore, students also
have issues regarding the application of grammatical rules while writing English, even
though they have studied the subject for several years in schools. However, it should also be
noted that there are several areas in the grammar that are mostly problematic specially the
usage of articles and agreement between subject and verb (Leńko-Szymańska, 2014). In such
situations the teachers use the language corpora in English grammar teaching. The corpora
are huge collection of genuine texts that have been gathered after years of research. Therefore
the teachers tend to use corpora in the grammar teaching as they can use this as a powerful
tool for teaching grammar to students. Despite the consequences of the plan of students with
the English language in future, the students have always benefitted with the usage of corpus
in their learning. For instance, the corpora can be used for checking the problems in the usage
of English language while writing any text, for proofreading and translating any other
language into English. Corpora have already been used in the English language teaching
purpose for a long time. As indicated by Leńko-Szymańska (2014) there are few empirical
studies that have evaluated the usage of corpora for both teaching and learning. However
most of these studies have involved small groups of students while using the corpora. The
lexical searches have also been proved to be the easiest ones that have been done with the

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corpora. It has also been found out that the corpus have been used mostly within the
classroom, not outside the classroom.
Use of the three dimensional grammar frameworks
Foreign language teachers always struggle in maintaining the balance between the
communication and grammar instruction. Considering the grammar usage in terms of the
grammar formation and teaching of the grammar and the teaching of other linguistic rules, it
can be said that it is deep rooted concept between the educator and learner (Halliday &
Matthiessen, 2013). There are three dimensions of meaning, form and use within the
grammar teaching. This article will discuss these three dimensional grammar frameworks.
The dimension of form refers to the way that the grammar structure is assembled and
organized within a discourse or text. There are several inbuilt disciplines within this
dimension such as morphology, phonology, syntax and graphology that play as a major factor
in the learning and teaching of any language form (Purpura, 2013). The dimension of form
mostly focuses on identifying the grammar structure such as the auxiliary verb or different
forms of the main verb.
The dimension of meaning is associated with the meaning of a specific structure of
grammar and what it conveys. As stated by Kucer (2014) the most natural component of the
dimension of meaning is the derivational morphemes, worlds, lexical strings and multiword
notions. The meaning can be of two kinds, grammatical and lexical. The grammatical
structure is mostly focused on placing the receiver of the action.
The dimension of use is associated with why and when the speakers of English
language decide the usage of grammar structures over any other structure which can also
convey the similar meaning (Bygate, Skehan & Swain, 2013). It pursues the same and
relevant components, discourse patterns and social functions. The structure is also used when

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the agent is unknown or redundant. It is also considered that these three dimensions are used
in the teaching of grammar for expressing means and utilizing in the context appropriate
usage.
Use of focus - on- form tasks
The ‘focus on form’ is an approach within the grammar and language learning sphere,
where the learners have been made to be conscious of the grammatical forms of any specific
language that the speakers already started using communicatively. The concept of focus on
forms has been directly contrasted with the idea of focus on meaning which has been
restricted to the meaning of the forms and paid no such attention to the forms of the language
(de la Fuente, 2014). The idea of focus on forms has been motivated by the lack of
sustainability for the effectiveness of focus on forms on one hand, and clearly demonstrated
advantages by the language learning over the uninstructed language learning on the other.
The learners of any language tend to acquire the features of the target language in a specific
sequence, not all at one go. In this sequence, most of the stages in the learning process will
indicate to the forms that are not like natives. Moreover progress within these stages is not at
all done in a transparent way, however they may also indicate to the U shaped learning
process where native like usage of the language may revert to the non-native usage of the
language. As indicated byLarsen-Freeman (2015), it can be said that the uninstructed learning
of language has a clear advantage for the instructed learning procedure within both the
ultimate and learning level. However, as opined by Uysal & Bardakci (2014) the focus on
form learning should be included in the second language teaching programs in an effective
way, as only the meaning oriented learning is not sufficient for the learners, rather they
require both. The focus on form ideas also happen on a regular basis within the lessons that
are message oriented without having any disturbances in the flow of communication for the
learners.

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Part 2:
Grammar instruction task using the corpora
Cohort of Students: There are 10 students in the cohort aged 10-12 years.
Student profile: The first language of these students is Sinhala or Tamil. They are at
elementary level of the primary section.
There have been several researches conducted for evaluating the effectiveness of the
corpus linguistics. This task will be design for a cohort of students in the primary level.
Within this cohort there are ten students who are learning the English language as a second
language. Using the corpora based learning; the students will have two activities. Those
activities are verb pairing game and the computer cloze activity. Both the activities have been
described below:
Verb pairing game:
In this activity, the students will be divided into two groups. For this game the teacher
will choose two verbs at one time. For the first verb pairing activity, the chosen verbs will be
‘make’ and ‘do’. By dividing the students into two groups, the teacher will give the first
groups few sentences that are corpus derived and those are without the selected verbs ‘make’
and ‘do’. The second group of students will have the sentences with ‘make’ and ‘do’.
Therefore the teacher will make both the groups stand in two lines facing each other. After
this, the students who are having sentences with the verbs will make different turns for
paining these verbs with the other sentences that the second group has.
Computer cloze activity
For integrating this computer cloze activity in the class, the students can be benefitted
in two different ways. They can practice the usage of verbs along with learning the

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collocations. The teacher will have to take help of computers and projectors in this activity.
The teacher will prepare a list of sentences with both the verbs ‘make’ and ‘do’ while he or
she will delete the verbs. Therefore, the students will be shown the sentences on a projector in
the class and they will be asked to fill up the gaps using these verbs. Sample sentences will
be:
 I remember coming back from school and before you could _________ homework or
go out to play there were always chores to do.
 He is going to _________ decision.
Grammar instruction task using three dimensional grammar frameworks
Cohort of Students: There are five to six students in the cohort aged 12-14 years.
Student profile: This task will be framed for the students at the junior secondary level.
Within the three dimensional grammar frameworks, the three major dimensions are
structure or form, meaning and use. Within the form, the teacher will focus on the formation
of language, within the meaning dimension the teacher will focus on the meaning of language
and within use the teacher will focus on the usage of language. At this level, the teacher will
focus on teaching the usage of passive voice in English. For teaching the formation of passive
voice in English language the teacher will have questions prepared for the students. He or she
will show the questions to the students with both the active and passive sentences. These will
tell the students about the differentiation between the active and passive usage of grammar in
English language. the students could also be asked to ask questions if they have any doubt
regarding the formation of the passive voice. The next activity will involve the meaning of
passive voice in English. The teacher will use flashcards where meaning of passive sentences
will be written along with their active forms. By writing such meanings, the teacher will be
able to make the students understand regarding the meaning differences in the language. The

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third activity will involve the use of the language. This activity can involve role playing
functions. The teacher can divide the students in two groups naming active and passive and
the students can utter the active and passive voices that were written in the given flashcards.
This will give them an idea of active and passive voice in a clearer way.
Grammar instruction task using of focus - on- form
Cohort of Students: There are 10 students in the cohort aged 12-14 years.
Student profile: The students are at the junior secondary level. As their first language is not
English, they are having trouble in understanding the signals and instructions of English
language.
After introducing the concepts of integrated focus on forms and the sequential focus
on forms. Both the leanings have been created in accordance with the explicit and implicit
forms of leaning. The sequential focus on form is based on the perceptive and practicing of
any grammatical form rather than the natural form of language. On the other hand the
integrated approach of focus on form is associated with the natural meaning and
communication where a particular form is provided within the communication flow without
making any interruption. The teacher can use two models in teaching English grammar using
the focus on form approach. Within the first model the teacher will give the students a brief
instruction of the formal knowledge of the language while focusing on the functions of focus
on form with brief interventions and signals. In the next model the teacher will give explicit
instructions of the formal knowledge of the language. The communicative activities will be
included for making an extensive practice of the procedures.

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Reference list
Bygate, M., Skehan, P., & Swain, M. (2013). Researching pedagogic tasks: Second language
learning, teaching, and testing. Routledge.
Charles, M. (2014). Getting the corpus habit: EAP students’ long-term use of personal
corpora. English for Specific Purposes, 35, 30-40.
de la Fuente, M. J. (2014). Learners' attention to input during focus on form listening tasks:
the role of mobile technology in the second language classroom. Computer Assisted
Language Learning, 27(3), 261-276.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. (2013). Halliday's introduction to functional
grammar. Routledge.
Kucer, S. B. (2014). Dimensions of literacy: A conceptual base for teaching reading and
writing in school settings. Routledge.
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2015). Research into practice: Grammar learning and
teaching. Language Teaching, 48(2), 263-280.
Lee, O., Quinn, H., & Valdés, G. (2013). Science and language for English language learners
in relation to Next Generation Science Standards and with implications for Common
Core State Standards for English language arts and mathematics. Educational
Researcher, 42(4), 223-233.
Leńko-Szymańska, A. (2014). A teacher-training course on the use of corpora in language
education: Perspectives of the students. Insights into Technology-enhanced Language
Pedagogy. Peter Lang: Frankfurt am Main, 129-144.

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Leńko-Szymańska, A. (2014). Is this enough? A qualitative evaluation of the effectiveness of
a teacher-training course on the use of corpora in language education. ReCALL, 26(2),
260-278.
Purpura, J. E. (2013). Assessing grammar. John Wiley & Sons, Inc..
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Richards, J. C., & Rodgers, T. S. (2014). Approaches and methods in language teaching.
Cambridge university press.
Uysal, H. H., & Bardakci, M. (2014). Teacher beliefs and practices of grammar teaching:
focusing on meaning, form, or forms?. South African Journal of Education, 34(1), 1-
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