Abstract
This study investigates how frequently reactive and preemptive Language Related Episodes (LREs) are used in communicative classes. The study also examines the potential of the two types of focus on form in leading to uptake. To this end, all LREs were identified and transcribed from the audio-recordings of 24 hours of instruction from one class with two qualified instructors. The LREs were then categorized in terms of reactive vs. preemptive episodes, and learner- vs. teacher-initiated preemptive episodes. The findings indicated a significant difference in the frequency of reactive and preemptive LREs and between two types of preemptive episodes. Based on the low amount of uptake in the findings, a new definition of uptake is suggested which encapsulates ‘camouflaged’ uptakes as well as learners’ immediate responses to focus on form. The paper highlights the necessity of raising EFL teachers’ awareness to make informed decisions in using different types of focus on form.
Keywords: focus on form, reactive & preemptive LRE, uptake
1. Introduction
The role of interaction in L2 learning gained considerable importance through the work of Hatch (1978) who stressed the need to study the nature of the input given to L2 learners and its possible role in second language acquisition (SLA). This growing interest in the role of interaction emerged as a result of a reaction to Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis. The Input Hypothesis by Krashen (1982, 1998) states that in order for input to be available for acquisition, it must be comprehensible. On the other hand, Long (1983, 1996) claims that comprehensible input is necessary but not sufficient for language learning to take place. Long argues that input shaped through interaction contributes directly and powerfully to acquisition, and that modifications to the interactional structure of conversation are important to make input comprehensible.
Central to all these studies may be the role of output in L2 acquisition. Comprehensible input alone is not adequate for language acquisition. Swain’s Comprehensible Output Hypothesis (1985 a, b; 1995) deals with this inadequacy. This hypothesis proposes that comprehensible input may not be sufficient for certain aspects of L2 acquisition and that comprehensible output may be needed. Based on this hypothesis, learners must also be given the opportunity to produce comprehensible output. According to this hypothesis, the role of output is to provide opportunities for contextualized and meaningful use of language, to test out hypotheses about the target language, and to move the learner from a purely semantic analysis of the language to its syntactic analysis (Swain, 1995).
Long’s Interaction Hypothesis and Swain’s Output Hypothesis are closely associated with attention to linguistic forms within the context of performing communicative activities which has been termed “focus on form” (Long, 1991). Focus on form contrasts with more traditional types of form-focused instruction (referred to by Long, 1991 as “focus on forms”), where specific linguistic features are isolated for intensive treatment, often in non-communicative activities. In contrast, in focus on form instruction the primary focus of attention is on meaning. The attention to form arises out of meaning-centered activity derived from the performance of a communicative task (Long and Robinson, 1998; Doughty and Williams, 1998b; Ellis, 2001). Long and Robinson (1998) defined focus on form as follows: “an occasional shift of attention to linguistic code features – by the teacher and/or one or more of the learners – triggered by perceived problems with comprehension or production” (p. 23).
The interest in focus on form stems, in part, from the suggestion that it can enable learners to develop linguistic accuracy because it creates the conditions for interlanguage restructuring to take place (Doughty, 2001; Long and Robinson, 1998). Focus on form allows learners to take time out from a focus on meaning to notice linguistic items in the input, thereby overcoming a potential obstacle of purely meaning-focused lessons in which linguistic forms may go unnoticed. Such noticing, Schmidt (1990, 1995, 2001) argues, is necessary for L2 learning. Not only does focus on form provide learners with an opportunity to notice linguistic items, but it may also help them to ‘notice the gap’ (Schmidt and Frota, 1986) between models of the target language and their own language production. Furthermore, focus on form provides opportunities for ‘pushed output’ which stretches learners’ competence through the need to express themselves in language that is accurate and appropriate (Swain, 1995, 2000; Swain and Lapkin, 1995). For these reasons, focus on form is seen as potentially beneficial for L2 learners and these theoretical explanations provide a compelling rationale for including focus on form in second/foreign language curricula.
1.1. Planned vs. incidental focus on form
Various studies have examined focus on form leading to several distinctions in this respect. One is between planned and incidental focus on form (Ellis 2001, 2005). In planned focus on form, there is an a priori decision made on the part of teacher to target specific linguistic items during meaning-focused activities. This targeting may take the form of enhanced input, targeted output or both (Doughty & Williams, 1998b). Previous studies of planned focus on form have targeted, among other linguistic forms, past tense (Doughty and Varela, 1998) and question formation in English (Mackey and Philp, 1998), adjective ordering and locative construction in Japanese, and direct object topicalization and adverb placement in Spanish (Long et al., 1998). Thus, in these studies, focus on form was the result of prior planning on the part of the researcher/teacher. In contrast, incidental focus on form (Ellis, 2001) occurs spontaneously, without prior intention, during meaning-focused activities and targets a variety of linguistic items. While planned focus on form is intensive, focusing frequently on the same linguistic structure, incidental focus on form has a more extensive focus, with many linguistic structures being targeted but on only one or two occasions (Ellis et al., 2001a). It is incidental focus on form which is explored in the present study.
1.2. Reactive vs. pre-emptive focus on form
Another distinction that has been made is between reactive and pre-emptive focus on form (Ellis et al., 2001a, 2001b; Long and Robinson 1998). Reactive focus on form has also been known as error correction, corrective feedback, or negative evidence/feedback (Long 1996), and occurs when, in the context of meaning-focused activities, learners’ attention is drawn to errors in their production. Thus, the error is the trigger which begins the discourse targeting a specific linguistic item (Ellis et al., 2001b).
Lyster & Ranta (1997) investigated the different types of reactive focus on form that French immersion teachers provide when learners produce utterances that contain a linguistic error. They distinguished six types of feedback, namely explicit correction, recasts, clarification requests, metalinguistic feedback, elicitation, and repetition.
A considerable number of studies on reactive focus on form, mostly referred to as corrective feedback in the literature, have been conducted so far including a number of major descriptive studies by Lyster (1998a, 1998b), Lyster & Ranta (1997), Oliver (2000), and an extensive review by Seedhouse (1997b). These studies have explored the effect of corrective feedback on short-term and long-term second language development (Doughty & Williams, 1998a; Lyster, 2004; Radwan, 2005), the corrective feedback that leads to successful uptake as an immediate response to feedback (Panova & Lyster, 2002; Farrokhi, 2003; Tsang, 2004; Loewen, 2004a; Sheen, 2004), how learners perceive negative feedback (Mackey et al., 2000) and the relationship between input and interaction (Oliver,1995, 2000; Gass, 2003; Mackey et al., 2003; Mackey & Silver, 2005). This research tradition explored some important aspects such as feedback types and the degree of their success in the short term in various learning contexts and ages. The studies have also each examined particular instructional contexts, immersion classes (Swain, 1998; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Lyster, 2002), adult ESL settings (Ellis et al., 2001a, 2001b; Panova and Lyster, 2002; Loewen, 2004a), child ESL settings (Oliver, 1995, 2000; Oliver and Mackey, 2003), adult EFL settings (Sheen, 2004; Tsang, 2004; Radwan, 2005), or laboratory contexts (Izumi, 2002; Iwashita, 2003; Shehadeh, 2003; Mackey et al, 2003). These studies show that corrective feedback is a common event in meaning-focused settings even in immersion classes; that teachers typically favor indirect, implicit correction rather than direct, explicit correction; and that learners often do not uptake correction (i.e., they usually do not try to produce the correct utterance that has been modeled for them).
While reactive focus on form has been investigated fairly extensively (e.g., Doughty and Williams 1998a), pre-emptive focus on form has received much less attention. Ellis et al. (2001b) raised concern over the lack of empirical studies on pre-emptive focus on form and the necessity to examine pre-emptive episodes as well as reactive ones. Ellis et al. (2001b: 414) define pre-emptive focus on form as occurring when either the teacher or a learner initiates attention to form even though no actual problem in production has arisen. They argue that pre-emptive focus on form addresses an actual or perceived gap in the learners’ knowledge, and in their study of two ESL classes in New Zealand they found that pre-emptive focus on form constituted 52% of the focus on form that occurred in 12 hours of meaning-focused instruction. Furthermore, they distinguished between learner-initiated focus on form in which learners raised questions about linguistic items and teacher-initiated focus on form in which the teacher either asked questions or provided unsolicited information about specific linguistic items. In their study, learner-initiated focus on form accounted for just over 38% of the episodes while teacher-initiated episodes were just over 9% (ibid).
Regarding teacher-initiated pre-emptive LREs, Borg (1998) has shown that the experienced teacher he studied often pre-empted language problems. He notes that this teacher’s approach to grammar was largely unplanned and that he made decisions about what language points to focus on incidentally. Some of the strategies this teacher utilized were clearly pre-emptive rather than reactive in nature. They involved asking whether the learners had any problems, relating a grammar point to the learners’ L1, giving rules, guides, clues for the use of a grammatical feature, using metalingual terminology, and eliciting rules from the learners (Borg, 1998, p. 23–24).
Williams’s (1999) study of learner-initiated focus on form in the context of collaborative group work included consideration of pre-emptive focus on form. This study examined how learners in an academically oriented ESL course focus on form in collaborative group work involving various kinds of form- and meaning-focused activities. It found that the learners did initiate focus on form but not very often, that more proficient learners paid more attention to form than less proficient, that focus on form arose most frequently in learner-generated requests to the teacher about language, and that the type of form that the learners focused on was “overwhelmingly lexical” (p. 610). A similar finding is reported by Poole (2005) in his study of forms learners attend to during focus on form instruction in an advanced ESL writing class with international students. While acknowledging the differences between his study and that of Williams (1999) in terms of design, Poole also found the vast majority of forms learners attended to were lexical in nature.
2. Aims of the Study
This study involved the observation of communicatively-oriented classroom activities, identification and analysis of incidental Language Related Episodes (LREs) in teacher-learner interactions. The prime objective was to investigate how frequently different types of focus on form are used in Iranian EFL classes. The second major aspect of this study is concerned with the analysis of pre-emptive language related episodes and its comparison with reactive ones. As Ellis et al. (2002) and Ellis (2005) maintain, any consideration of teacher- or learner-initiated pre-emptive focus on form is almost completely missing from current accounts of focus on form studies. It seems that these types of form-focused instruction have eluded research enquiries. Almost all studies of this nature have dealt with one single type of focus on form, namely reactive episodes. However, pre-emptive language related episodes are also an indispensable part of focus on form instruction and are at least as important and effective as reactive ones in leading to uptake (Ellis et al., 2001a). Any operational definition and categorization of form-focused episodes within meaning-oriented classes should take both into account. Therefore, the second objective was to categorize and compare both teacher- and learner-initiated pre-emptive LREs as well as reactive ones quantitatively and qualitatively to develop a better understanding of their potentials vis-à-vis. Finally, this study investigated the occurrence of uptake following focus on form instruction. To meet these objectives, the following research questions were formulated:
(1) To what extent does focus on form occur in a meaning-centered intermediate EFL class with adult learners?
(2) Are there any significant differences in the use of reactive and pre-emptive types of focus on form in the observed class?
(3) Are there any significant differences in the frequencies of teacher-initiated and learner-initiated pre-emptive LREs in the observed class?
(4) How frequently does uptake occur in incidental LREs in general, and in reactive
and preemptive LREs in particular in the observed class?
3. Method
To address these questions, interactions between teachers and EFL learners were audio-recorded, transcribed, categorized and compared in terms of the frequency of reactive and pre-emptive episodes, and the amount of uptake following them.
3.1. Participants
3.1.1. Teachers
Two teachers participated in this study. Teacher one (female, 35 years old) had been teaching at language schools including the one where this study was conducted for 12 years. She completed her M.A. studies in TEFL 6 years before this study. Her professional background suggested that she had been teaching in a nation-wide popular language school which advocates a strong adherence to the principles of structural/synthetic syllabuses as defined by Wilkins (1976). Teacher two (male, 32 years old), a PhD student in TEFL, had 4 years of EFL teaching experience and has been mainly involved in syllabus designing and teaching International English Language Testing System (IELTS) preparatory classes according to the school manager. They taught the same group of learners in two consecutive semesters covering the same book, namely Focus on IELTS (O’Connell, 2002). The book contains 20 chapters and was to be covered in two 20-session semesters. Every session lasted for 90 minutes. The first teacher covered the first 10 units, and the second teacher went through the last 10 ones.
3.1.2. Learners
The learners consisted of 12 university learners, 5 males and 7 females who were majoring in medicine or engineering. They all shared Turkish as their mother tongue and were quite fluent in Persian as the official language in Iran. Their ages ranged between 19 and 34 years. The learners paid tuition and were generally highly motivated. Based on the information collected at the time of the registration for IELTS classes in this school, most of them were attending these IELTS preparation courses with a view to sitting for the IELTS exam and eventually applying to overseas universities to further their studies, whereas nearly a quarter of these learners were interested in developing their academic English for pursuing their studies in masters or doctoral programs in medicine and engineering in Iran
3.3. Instructional Setting
One intact class in a private English language school in Tabriz, Iran was selected as a suitable site for data collection based on the objectives of the study, and the fact that learners’ shared a linguistic and cultural background. In this language school, preparatory classes for IELTS exam, which is one of the major language proficiency tests required by academic institutions, were divided into 7 proficiency levels with pre-intermediate and intermediate representing levels 4 and 5 respectively. According to an in-house placement test used for placing learners in these IELTS preparation classes, the participants’ command of English was rated as pre-intermediate representing level 4. The class was observed during their studies at IELTS level 4 and level 5.
In this private language school, the observed class met twice per week, and every session lasted 90 minutes. The course book was Focus on IELTS (O’Connell, 2002) which is about introducing different sample sections and questions of academic version of IELTS. The course book provides practice on listening, reading, writing and speaking tasks similar to the real IELTS exam. Most of the content of the lessons are taken from authentic sources and are primarily meaning focused in that they have no predetermined linguistic focus. Preceding and following any reading and listening, there are some tasks or discussion questions developed to involve learners more with the topics and simulate the subsections of the IELTS exam. In some units, there are explicit references to some common mistakes in English along with their correct forms and some exercises to be practiced with answer keys. In the observed classes, they were all assigned as homework and were not covered during classes.
The classroom activities included role plays similar to the ones in IELTS interviews, jigsaw tasks (e.g., solving an environmental problem or some social problems such as unemployment or child labor), general class discussions (e.g., discussion on a movie, a historical monument), opinion-gap tasks (e.g., making predictions about the future), reading comprehension activities (e.g., using information in a passage to complete the missing words in a summary paragraph, paragraph heading matching, true/false/not-given statements). Learners went through the reading passages at home and discussed their understandings, opinions on the topic and their answers to the various types of tasks following a reading passage in class. Listening activities included table, diagram, or map completion, multiple choice questions and fill in the blanks. The listening tasks were all based on some dialogs or mini-lectures on social and academic English in authentic contexts. These tasks were completed during the class and teachers tried to devise some pre-listening and post-listening activities to engage their learners with the topic thematically and get them to express their own ideas on the topic. There were some content-based questions based on the reading passage or the listening material in every unit. Teachers spent some time on checking the correct answers on the basis of the ideas stated in the reading or listening material. Regarding writings, there was a brainstorming activity on the writing topic in class. The participants were encouraged to share their views on the topic as teachers wrote most of the key ideas or expressions on the board. Then, learners were asked to develop and write an essay at home using their notes and ideas they picked up from the class discussion on the topic for the next class. As the most common class activities, IELTS preparatory teachers in this language school used pair-work, group-work and whole class discussions.
3.4. Data Collection Procedures
The data were collected entirely from the meaning-focused activities from the same class in IELTS level 4 and 5 with two instructors. Two mini-size MP3 wireless recorders were employed to record whole-class interactions between the teachers and their learners. This procedure provided data relating to any interaction involving the teachers and the whole class. Therefore, interactions between learners in pairs or between the teachers and individual learners in pair works were not audible, and thus not captured for analysis. This constitutes a limitation of this study. All the analyzed data and quantification are solely based on the recorded interactions between the teachers and their learners which were audible to all of the learners and thus recoverable for the researchers.
Using this method and during 18 sessions of instruction, the authors collected 24 hours of classroom instruction, 12 hours from each teacher’s class. In every session, the first and last 5 minutes when the teachers mostly greeted and roll called the learners or gave instructions for the homework or the next class, were not included in the analysis. Moreover, there were some focus on forms or grammar-oriented interactions which were also excluded from analysis. Finally, to obtain a balanced rate of data for comparison, the researchers came up with 10 hours of meaning-oriented instruction per each class, totaling 20 hours of naturally-occurring data in which teachers and their learners were involved in communicatively-oriented interaction on topics of general interest raised in that unit.
Moreover, to collect further qualitative and confirmatory data in order to cross-check and interpret the audio-recorded data, one of the researchers was present in the class as a non-participant observer for 9 hours (3 sessions in each teacher’s class) and took field notes while trying to minimize any interference in the teaching process.
Six hours of instruction were also videotaped for the same purpose. There were already two wall-mounted mini-video recorders placed in the top corners of the classroom, one at the front overlooking the learners, and the other at the back, zooming in on the frontal sections of the class. The school had a quality assurance department and the supervisory staff unobtrusively used these mini-cameras to monitor and optimize the quality of the ongoing instruction. Having obtained the permission of the participating teachers, the researchers used these cams to videotape 6 hours of instruction, 3 hours from each teacher’s class. Since this was an observational instrument established and practiced well before the implementation of this study, teachers and learners in this school generally got used to having them in their classes. Thus, it is assumed that the recordings did not interfere in the teaching process.
Finally, after the completion of the lessons on two occasions and upon getting learners’ consent, their books and notebooks were checked to collect any notes they took during their attendance in that particular class. Both teachers and learners were briefed that this is just to associate their notes with the ongoing interaction, and the recording of their notes is to be kept confidential and will be destroyed upon the completion of this study.
It should be noted that no effort was made to manipulate the frequency or characteristics of incidental focus on form. The teachers were not aware that the researchers intended to examine reactive and pre-emptive LREs. They were simply told that the aim of the study was to analyze classroom interaction during meaning-centered lessons. Thus, these observations can be representative of what normally takes place in these EFL classes.
3.5. Data Analysis
Long and Robinson (1998) classified focus on form into two major types: reactive and pre-emptive. Reactive focus on form happens when learners produce an utterance containing an actual non-target utterance, which is then addressed usually by the teacher but sometimes by another learner. Thus, it supplies learners with negative evidence. Reactive focus on form involves negotiation and is triggered by something problematic on the part of a learner. Reactive focus on form addresses a performance problem which may or may not reflect a competence problem. According to Varonis & Gass (1985), the discourse in reactive focus on form takes the form of sequences involving a trigger, an indicator of a problem, and a resolution. The following is an example of a reactive Language Related Episode taken from the data in the present study:
Extract 1: Reactive LRE with uptake
S: so he is in the university for 8 years
T: he has
S: =has been in the university for 8 years
T: yes
As the above extract illustrates, the teacher reformulates a learner’s erroneous utterance in the form of recast as one type of reactive LRE.
The second major category in focus on form instruction is pre-emptive LREs. According to Ellis et al (2001), pre-emptive focus on form deals with a problem similar to reactive focus on form. Pre-emptive focus on form involves the teacher or learner initiating attention to form even though no actual problem in production has happened (Ellis et al., 2001b). In other words, pre-emptive focus on form addresses an actual or a perceived gap in the learners’ knowledge. According to Varonis & Gass (1985), the type of discourse that takes place in pre-emptive focus on form consists typically of exchanges involving a query and response. Some instances of pre-emptive focus on form will make this distinction clear. Teachers sometimes predict a gap in their learners’ knowledge and seek to address it, as shown in this extract taken from the present study:
Extract 2: Teacher-initiated Pre-emptive LRE
T: ...Look at the diagram on page 35. There are 6 cities. It is about population,
homes with electricity, crime rate, level of ambient noise. What is ambient
noise?
Ss: environment, atmosphere.
T: in this context, noise pollution, the rate or amount of noise in different cities,
han!
Here the class is talking about mega-cities. The teacher takes time out from focusing on meaning to address a perceived gap in the learners’ lexical knowledge—the item “ambient noise”. Although such decisions interrupt the flow of a communicative activity and disrupt the meaning-centeredness of an activity, they highlight a specific form, assuming that this is justified on the grounds that the form in question will be problematic to the learners in some way. Teacher-initiated focus on form is initiated either by a query directed at the learners or by an advisory statement (Ellis et al., 2002).
One of the problems of such teacher-initiated pre-emption is that the perceived gap may not be an actual gap (Ellis et al., 2001b). In learner-initiated pre-emption’s, however, the gap is presumably real. In the next extract, it seems reasonable to assume that the learner does not know the meaning of ‘rush hour’:
Extract 3: Learner-initiated pre-emptive LRE
T: In rush hours, the rate of speed is very low.
S: Rush hour means?
T: the noisy hour, I mean, for example, at, from 5:30 to 6.
S: Yes
T: in Ramadan, it is the rush hour; people are rushing home to break their fast as
quickly as possible, ha! (Ss laugh)
Another important concept used in this study is uptake. In a series of studies, Lyster uses it to refer to learners’ response to the feedback they receive from teachers on their own efforts to communicate. Lyster and Ranta (1997, p. 49) have provided the following definition: "Uptake refers to a learner’s utterance that immediately follows the teacher’s feedback and that constitutes a reaction in some way to the teacher’s intention to draw attention to some aspect of the learner’s initial utterance." Whereas Lyster and Ranta have related uptake to the provision of corrective feedback, Ellis et al. (2001a, 2001b, 2002) take a broader perspective on uptake. They argue that uptake can occur even when the previous move does not involve corrective feedback. For example, there are occasions in communicative lessons where learners themselves pre-empt attention to a linguistic feature (e.g., by asking a question), thus eliciting not a teacher feedback move but a teacher response move. In such learner-initiated focus on form, learners still have the opportunity to react, for example, by simply acknowledging the previous move or by attempting to use the feature in focus in their own speech. The researchers adopted this expanded definition in counting the frequency of uptake moves in the present study.
Following the above mentioned categorization system adopted from Ellis et al. (2002), the data were subjected to a detailed analysis. In so doing, the researchers first listened to the audio-recordings, identified and then transcribed episodes in the classroom interactions in which participants made a departure from meaning-focused activities to deal with issues of a linguistic nature termed Language Related Episodes (LREs). Whenever the teachers or their learners incidentally interrupted a communicatively-oriented interaction and temporarily shifted their attention to formal aspects of language reactively or pre-emptively, these episodes were singled out as an LRE episode. LRE instances comprise the unit of analysis in this study. An LRE was operationally defined as consisting of the discourse from the point where the attention to linguistic form starts to the point where it ends (Ellis et al., 2001a). Every unit of analysis starts from the time when either the teacher or a learner makes a momentary departure from the ongoing communicative activity to focus on a linguistic issue, whether phonological, orthographical, lexical, syntactic, discoursal or pragmatic in nature. Next, LREs were categorized as reactive or pre-emptive as defined above. A further distinction was also made between pre-emptive LREs initiated by learners and pre-emptive LREs initiated by teachers. Finally, every LRE was analyzed in terms of whether it resulted in uptake or not.
The following example taken from Ellis et al. (2001a: 300) illustrates an LRE in which a learner asks a question about the meaning of a word in a discussion activity. All of these utterances pertain to the lexical item ‘spoil’ ; consequently, they constitute one LRE.
S: excuse me, T, what’s spoil means?
T: spoil means=
S: =spoil
T: if you are my child
S: mhm
T: and you keep saying give me, give me sweets, give me money, give me a football, let me watch TV, and I say yes all the time, yes, I spoil you. I give you too much because you always get what you want.
S: ah, ah
T: so
S: they spoil them, mm, they always get whatever
This example also illustrates uptake in a learner-initiated LRE. The learner has asked the meaning of spoil (line 1), and the teacher provides a response (lines 4, 6–8). In lines 9 and 11, the learner responds to the provision of linguistic information by incorporating part of the teacher’s definition into his own production, so this utterance by the learner is identified as an uptake move. Likewise, extracts 1, 2, 3 taken from the data in this study represent instances of different types of LREs with or without uptake.
Because the study was limited to focus on form that was interactionally and incidentally accomplished, the researchers excluded episodes involving a problem or query concerned with content such as erroneous answers and corrections to questions about geographical locations, dates, key political or artistic figures, or any other content knowledge.
Once identified, the LREs were transcribed. Due to the large amount of the audio-taped data, only episodes involving focus on form episodes were transcribed. The researchers subsequently listened to the recordings one more time to check the accuracy of their transcriptions. Afterwards, raw frequencies as well as percentages of LRE types and uptake occurrences were calculated. Since the data consisted of frequency counts of categorical data, Pearson’s chi-square analysis was used in order to test whether the similarities and differences in the frequency of LRE types were statistically significant.
Moreover, the findings from audio-recorded data were checked against the information collected from video-recordings, field notes from the observer and learner notes. The qualitative data were used to analyze and interpret the quantitative findings.
To check the inter-rater reliability in coding the data into reactive and pre-emptive LREs, teacher- or learner-initiated pre-emptive LREs, and finally the occurrence of uptake, another researcher (an assistant professor in applied linguistics who was briefed about the study, its objectives and data analysis procedure, reviewed examples from other similar studies, and received demonstration on the coding procedure based on Ellis et al, 2001) independently coded 10 percent of the data with a resulting 86% agreement rate in the identification of LREs and their categorization.
4. Results
4.1. Focus on form as reactive vs. pre-emptive LREs
A total of 641 LREs were identified in the 20 hours of meaning-focused lessons, 334 and 307 LREs in IELTS level 4 and 5 respectively. This means that an average of one instance of LRE took place every 1.9 minutes as demonstrated in Table 1.
Table 1: Frequencies and Percentages of Reactive vs. Pre-emptive LREs
See PDF File
Moreover, the findings in Table 1 show the frequencies and percentages of reactive and pre-emptive LREs in general and between two teachers in particular. In general, 168 (26.2%) instances of reactive episodes occurred while there were 473 instances (73.8%) of pre-emptive LREs. Thus, the frequency of pre-emptive LREs is remarkably more than that of reactive LREs.
With regard to the proportion of reactive and pre-emptive LREs, the first teacher in level 4 used twice as many reactive LREs as the second teacher in level 5. However, the proportion of pre-emptive LREs in both levels was found to be similar i.e., 222 and 251 in level 4 and level 5 respectively. The findings represent a substantial discrepancy in the frequency of reactive and pre-emptive LREs. A Chi-square analysis revealed a statistically significant difference, X² = 19.34 (1df, p<.05).
4.2. Teacher-initiated vs. learner-initiated pre-emptive LREs
The results on the frequency of teacher- vs. learner-initiated pre-emptive LREs are presented in Table 2. There are far more instances of teacher-initiated pre-emptive LREs than learner-initiated ones in general, namely 398 (84.1%) and 75 (15.9%). Chi-square analysis shows a statistically significant difference, X² = 3.87 (1df, p<.05).
Moreover, the second teacher in level 5 used more pre-emptive LREs than the first one in level 4. Unlike their teacher, the learners in level 4 felt the need to raise more queries about language than they did in level 5. However, teacher-initiated pre-emptive LREs were found to be 5 times as many as learner-initiated LREs in general.
Table 2: Frequencies and Percentages of Teacher- vs. Learner-initiated Pre-emptive LREs
Table 2 See PDF File
4.3. Uptake Moves
The last research question in this study dealt with uptake. Tables 3 and 4 illustrate the results. Table 3 presents the number of all LREs which were found to lead to uptake. Of 334 LREs in level 4, 71 (17.5%) LREs resulted in uptake. On the other hand, uptake took place even less frequently in level 5. At that level, there were 44 (12.5%) uptake moves. The overall number of uptakes indicates that the learners verbally acknowledged and signaled their understanding of the LREs merely in 15.2% of the cases. Chi-square analysis did not show any significant difference between LREs and uptake in level 4 and 5, X² = 3.63 (1df, p<.05).
Table 3: Frequencies and Percentages of Uptake Moves
(See PDF File)
In this study, the amount of uptake in reactive and preemptive LREs is also investigated. The objective was to see whether there was a significant relationship between LRE type and uptake moves. Table 4 shows that there were 72 (62.6%) and 43 (37.4%) uptakes following reactive and preemptive LREs respectively. Reactive episodes resulted in uptake more frequently than preemptive ones at both levels. Nevertheless, the chi-square analysis on the relationship between LRE types and the amount of uptake did not result in a significant difference, X² = 3.12 (1df, p<.05).
Table 4: Frequencies and Percentages of Uptake in Reactive and Preemptive LREs
(See PDF File)
Qualitative findings are elaborated in the following section to interpret and justify the findings on the frequency of LRE type and uptake moves.
5. Discussion
The purpose of this study was to examine incidental focus on form as it arose naturally in the course of meaning-focused IELTS preparatory lessons involving adult learners from the same language background in an EFL context, namely Iran. A total of 641 LREs were identified in the 20 hours of meaning-focused lessons, a rate of one LRE every 1.9 minutes. The overall numbers of LRES in level 4 and level 5 were 334 and 307 respectively, demonstrating a slight difference in the frequency of LREs at two levels. In a similar study, Ellis et al. (2001b) identified 448 instances of focus on form in 12 hours in an ESL context (New Zealand) with language learners from multiple nationalities mostly East Asian. In their study, there was a focus on form episode (FFE), as they called it, at a rate of every 1.6 minutes. Also, Lyster (1998b) reports 558 responding FFEs in 18.5 hours of immersion instruction, a rate of one LRE every 1.97 minutes. Lyster, however, only examined reactive LREs. Oliver (2000) found 614 teacher responses to erroneous learner turns (i.e., reactive focus on form) in four meaning-centered ESL lessons (two with adults and two with children). She did not mention the duration of the lessons, but from the descriptions provided it is unlikely they exceeded 12 hours i.e., approximately one LRE per 1.2 minutes.
In the present study, the overall occurrence of LREs was not as frequent as it was in Ellis et al. (2001b), Lyster (1998b), and Oliver (2000). However, the differences do not seem to be outstanding. The overall LRE frequency in this study indicates that there are a substantial number of LREs in the observed lessons. Both teachers tried to integrate focus on form instruction and meaning-oriented learning in their teaching. Focus on form is found to be a common occurrence in this EFL class. As Loewen (2004a) observed, currently there is little guidance for teachers regarding the optimal number of LREs in a meaning-focused lesson. Decisions about focusing on form in an activity may hinge on how comfortable the teacher and learners are with the frequency of it. This study has not directly addressed the optimal frequency of LREs but offers a descriptive picture of the amount of focus on form in an EFL class with intermediate EFL adult learners. As in ESL and immersion contexts, incidental focus on form occurred frequently in this EFL context. However, there are some differences in the distribution of LRE types and their effectiveness measured as uptake with similar studies in the literature.
The second research question was concerned with the proportion of pre-emptive and reactive LREs in the data. Based on the findings in Table 1, this study has also revealed that incidental focus on form is as likely to be pre-emptive as reactive in communicative EFL classes. However, the results indicate that there were far more pre-emptive LREs than reactive ones in general, and Chi-square analysis revealed a significant difference in the distribution of reactive and pre-emptive LREs. It means that in all of the observed lessons, both teachers and learners felt the need to raise attention to linguistic forms (pre-emptive LREs) while there was not any actual error. The equal rate of reactive and pre-emptive LREs in Ellis et al. (2001b) contrasts sharply with the findings of this study. In their study, the LREs were evenly divided between reactive and pre-emptive (223 and 225, respectively) and there was a small difference between the two classes.
Moreover, this study explored the frequency of teacher- and learner-initiated pre-emptive LREs as expressed in the third research question. As noted above, there were far more cases of teacher-initiated LREs than learner-initiated ones, and the difference is statistically significant. Surprisingly, the two teachers initiated attention to form 398 times (roughly 84%) while the learners raised questions about language 72 times (16%) out of the total 473 pre-emptive episodes in this study. Such a huge discrepancy between the proportions of the teacher- and learner-initiated LREs is comparatively similar to the findings in Loewen (2004b) and Williams (1999) but very different from the ones in Ellis et al. (2001). Loewen (2004b) found a low rate of learner-initiated LREs in his study of pre-emptive LREs in 32 hours of communicative activities in 12 ESL classes in a private language school in New Zealand. Of 1373 LREs identified in his data, just 365 (26.5%) were learner-initiated. Likewise, Williams (1999) in her study of learner-generated focus on form in the context of collaborative group work found that the learners did initiate focus on form but not very often. In contrast, Ellis et al. (2001b) reported that the majority of pre-emptive LREs in their study were learner-initiated in both classes they observed (76 out of 99 in class 1, and 89 out of 126 in class 2).
The question remains as to why such variation in the frequency and characteristics of incidental LREs should occur in the observed lessons and among various instructional contexts. In light of the following empirical and theoretical studies in the literature, the findings in this study will be analyzed and interpreted. One explanation for the variation in this study may stem from teachers’ attitude to the use of incidental focus on form. It is likely that some teachers regard incidental focus on form as an effective means of addressing linguistic items within meaning-focused lessons, and therefore incorporate it frequently into their lessons (Borg, 1998). On the other hand, other teachers may not opt to raise issues of linguistic form in meaning-focused activities on the grounds that it may disrupt the flow of communication. As Lyster and Ranta (1997) have pointed out, these teachers may fear that the “side shows” involving focus on form may damage conversational coherence. Furthermore, Ellis et al. (2002) maintain that teachers probably vary enormously in the extent to which they engage in teacher-initiated 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 (ibid). Such perspectives can have an impact on the frequency of LREs. On the other hand, Mackey et al. (2004) demonstrated that experienced ESL teachers used more incidental focus on form techniques than inexperienced teachers, and inexperienced teachers are less likely to deviate from their planned lessons to exploit spontaneous learning opportunities mostly in the form of preemptive LREs.
The above-mentioned points may partially account for the high frequency of teacher-initiated preemptive LREs in the present study. Both teachers in this study had a rich professional and academic background in ELT and therefore could manage making momentary departures from an ongoing communicative activity to focus on form. The videotaped data and field notes confirm that the teachers intervened frequently and provided preemptive LREs, thus assuming that they could predict the gaps in the learners’ linguistic command before they produced any error.
As noted before, the first teacher had some years of language teaching experience in a language school which prescribed a grammar-oriented approach to language teaching. Tentatively, a high rate of reactive LREs in level 4 class may be attributed to her focus on forms teaching experience in the past (Mackey et al., 2004). Like teachers’ beliefs on focus on form, their role in the class activities could affect the proportion of the LREs (Loewen, 2003). In the IELTS level 4, it was observed that the first teacher played an active role as a conversational partner, asking and answering discussion questions with the learners. Such interaction provided the teacher with the opportunity to focus on form in the course of conversation with individual learners. She repeatedly offered reactive LREs or in some cases preemptive ones during these interactions. As a result, she offered twice as many reactive LREs as did the second teacher in level 5. Additionally, the context of the activities, whether conducted with the whole class, small groups or pairs may account for some of the variation (Loewen, 2004a). A qualitative analysis of the videotaped data from these classes showed that the second teacher in level 5 made an extensive use of pair work activities and offered a lot of tips and preemptive LREs before involving the learners in a pair-work activity or following it.
For learner-initiated LREs, this study found a very low frequency. The previous research has identified several individual differences that may affect learners’ participation in learner-generated incidental focus on form, such as proficiency level (Leeser, 2004; Williams, 1999; Yule and Macdonald, 1990), task roles (Yule and Macdonald, 1990) and pair and group dynamics (Morris and Tarone, 2003; Storch, 2002). It is also possible that cultural differences in the norms of classroom conduct in general and in the predisposition to ask questions in particular could affect the number of LREs. For example, Cortazzi and Jin (1996) discuss Chinese learners’ negative perceptions of asking questions in class. Regarding the Iranian socio-cultural context, it seems more plausible to assume that Iranian adult EFL learners tend to shun away from asking too many questions which may reveal their gaps in knowledge, admitting their mistakes and verbally acknowledging it publicly particularly in a co-educational setting as was the case in this study. The same may hold true for the low frequency of uptake in this study.
Loewen (2004a) suggest that characteristics of the learning context, such as age of the learners, previous years of L2 grammatical instruction, and primary pedagogical focus of the current language program may have influenced the amount of focus on form and learners’ production of uptake in his study. Similarly, the last point for a partial explanation of the low rate of learner-initiated LREs in this study might lie in the primary pedagogical focus of the current language program. The observed class was aimed at preparing and acclimating learners with the format of IELTS exam. Like any other preparation program for proficiency tests such as TOEFL and IELTS, teachers and learners try to tailor the class activities to meet the requirements of the proficiency test. This is referred to as washback effect of testing on teaching, learning, and broadly on education system (Hughes, 1989; Cohen, 1994). Since IELTS is a skill-based test which gauges applicants’ communicative rather than linguistic competence per se, this may have a beneficial backwash impact on the learners (Saville, 2000; Alderson and Banerjee, 2001). In the context of this study, the pedagogical focus of the course may have encouraged learners to become more engaged in communicatively-oriented activities while being cautious whether to disrupt the natural flow of information by raising attention to formal aspects of language or not. Moreover, the high occurrence of teacher-initiated LREs may have obviated the need for learner queries.
Although further investigation of these issues is warranted, these explanations may go some way in justifying the findings in terms of the distribution of LRE types in this study. Of course, the researchers postulated on these findings based on their experience and knowledge on EFL practices in Iran in general, this language school in particular, and qualitative evidence collected from the observations of these lessons. In this respect, the authors feel the need to emphasize the fact that there was not any systematic survey of the teachers’ and learners’ beliefs and attitudes to focus on form in this study, and these comments should be interpreted and generalized with caution.
Finally, it is important to consider the effectiveness of the various types of LREs. While few studies have directly addressed the link between incidental focus on form and L2 learning, the majority of these studies have used uptake as an indication of the effectiveness of incidental focus on form (Lyster and Ranta, 1997; Oliver, 2000; Mackey et al, 2003; Ellis et al., 2001 a, 2001b, 2002; Loewen, 2003, 2004 to name but a few). The last research question in this study was concerned with uptake moves in response to incidental focus on form. The findings in Tables 3 and 4 show that uptake moves following incidental focus on form were very low in this study. The overall number of uptakes indicates that the learners verbally incorporated LREs in their immediate productions merely in 15.2% of the cases. Moreover, there was not any significant difference in the amount of uptake in two levels. Of course, uptake moves were more common following reactive episodes than pre-emptive ones. Out of 168 reactive episodes, 72 (44%) resulted in uptake whereas only 43 (9%) of 473 pre-emptive episodes led to learner uptake.
The low occurrence of uptake found in this study contrasts sharply with the findings of Ellis et al. (2001a). They reported much higher levels of uptake in their study of 12 hours of meaning-focused lessons in two ESL classes. They found that uptake occurred in 74% of the LREs in these classes. Additionally, unlike the findings in this study which did not show any significant association between LRE types and the occurrence of uptake, Ellis et al. (2001a) found that uptake was more frequent in reactive and learner-initiated LREs, whereas teacher-initiated LREs had significantly lower levels of successful uptake.
Other studies of uptake also demonstrate varying levels of uptake production. Lyster and Ranta (1997), in a study of four classes (18.3 hours) of Grade 4 French immersion lessons in Canada, found that only 27% of the reactive LREs resulted in successful uptake. Similarly, Mackey and Philp (1998), in their study of planned focus on form, found that only 33% of the recasts were repeated or modified, leaving 67% of the recasts to be followed by topic continuation on the part of the learner. Similarly, Oliver (1995), in a study of primary school children involved in an information exchange task, found that nonnative speakers incorporated just fewer than 10% of recasts into their own production. She argues, however, that 16% of the time it was not possible to incorporate recasts, and 55% of the time it was not appropriate to do so (such as after a yes/no question). Thus, she claims an uptake rate of 35%. Finally, Pica (2002), in an investigation of discussion activities in two content based classes in a university-based English language institute, found that limited opportunities existed for either negative feedback or modified learner output (uptake). Ellis et al. (2001a) suggest that the differing contexts of the research may account for these differences. They argue that some of the reported studies involved school-aged children rather than university learners, with the suggestion that younger learners might be less likely to produce uptake. Also, the immersion context of several of the studies may be responsible for decreased attention to linguistic form and more attention to meaning, since ‘‘the emphasis in an immersion program is not on studying the language, but on studying the content of the curriculum in the second language’’ (de Courcy, 2002, p. 5). These diverse findings suggest that the benefit of incidental focus on form in terms of successful uptake may vary considerably depending on the context.
Ellis et al. (2001a) contends that private language school settings (like the context of the present study) may make learners more inclined to notice linguistic form, even if they engage in meaning-focused activities during their studies. However, such statement is not supported by the findings of this study if uptake is considered as an indication of such noticing. In the present study, uptake moves were very low although lessons were observed in private language school with highly motivated learners. Does it mean that EFL learners in this class did not benefit from focus on form as it was reported in the literature?
Because uptake is an optional move (Ellis et al., 2001a), it does not necessarily occur after the provision of linguistic feedback. Learners may opt not to produce uptake, even if there is the opportunity for them to do so. Furthermore, there may not always be a chance for learners to produce uptake as immediate verbal responses to an LRE. Oliver (2000) maintains that learners may have no opportunity to react to teachers’ feedback if the teacher continues his or her turn. That does not mean, however, that if a learner fails to produce uptake, the linguistic form has not been noticed. Mackey and Philp (1998) suggest that ‘‘noticing/learning’’ is possible without the production of uptake. Their experimental study indicates that some learners can benefit acquisitionally even if they do not uptake recasts of their deviant utterances. Furthermore, it has been acknowledged that uptake is not necessarily indicative of L2 acquisition, although it may be facilitative of it (Ellis et al., 2001a; Lightbown, 1998).
Although such explanation may partially account for the low frequency of uptake moves in this study, a very low occurrence of uptake prompted the authors to proceed with a detailed analysis of the data from audio and video recordings, and field notes. The qualitative analysis of LREs revealed that a good number of uptake moves are not encapsulated in the current definition of the uptake. For example, the researchers found that there were many instances that the learners took notes whenever an LRE took place in the lessons. On two occasions, one of the authors checked learners’ notes after the completion of the class to confirm that their notes contained the LREs identified in the field notes and audio-recordings. Such evidence proved that there were a substantial number of teacher-initiated and some instances of learner-initiated preemptive LREs in which none of the learners acknowledged uptake verbally or explicitly while some decided to note it down in their books. The researchers call these instances “camouflaged” uptake moves.
Moreover, preemptive and reactive LREs were sometimes contextually so prominent and clearly illustrated that the researchers could unanimously conclude that every one in that class understood the point irrespective of the fact that they manifested their noticing explicitly in the form of uptake (for instance, see Extracts 4 and 5). Loewen (2004a) also raised this issue. He contends that when learners initiate an LRE, they are often looking for explicit information about a linguistic item, such as a vocabulary definition or an explanation of a grammatical item. The response to the provision of such information is very often likely to be an acknowledgment token, such as ‘oh’ or ‘yeah’. For example, in learner-initiated LREs about vocabulary (e.g., see Extract 3), learners did not often repeat all or even part of the definition provided for them so uptake, the way it is defined in the literature, did not take place. In the cited learner-initiated preemptive LRE in Extract 3, the teacher decided to depart from the ongoing meaningful interaction to teach the meaning of ‘rush hour’ and raised the context of fasting month (the holy month of Ramadan) in Islamic countries and the evening time when most of the fasting people are in a hurry to return home and break their fast. After activating learners’ schematic knowledge through this crystal-clear example, there was no need and in fact little expectation or opportunity for the students to acknowledge their incorporation of that vocabulary item as uptake. Conversely, in the case of reactive LREs, the classroom environment may have created an expectation that learner errors would be pointed out, and that when this occurred, learners should produce the correct form (Loewen, 2004a). Although further investigation of these points is warranted, they may go some way in explaining why uptake was found to be very low in general, and why reactive LREs resulted more in successful uptake than did preemptive LREs.
Considering the recent critical notions on the role of uptake as an index of language acquisition and the conflicting findings in the literature on the amount of uptake moves, it seems necessary to find more accountable measures of noticing form and its integration. SLA researchers need to find some other measures or use multiple indices to examine the effectiveness of focus on form. It seems that uptake needs to be redefined and expanded to take into account multiple sources of learners’ incorporation of LREs. In the modified definition of uptake, the researchers recommend that learners’ notes and non-verbal acknowledgements such as nodding following an LRE instance, intra-session immediate and delayed incorporation of LREs in the form of verbal or written responses by the learners be taken into account as indices of uptake. Videotaping interactions seems to be essential for this purpose. Then, analyzing uptake in terms of both verbal and non-verbal clues, oral as well as written incorporation of the LREs on the part of the learners along with retrospective data elicitation means such as stimulated recall procedures (Gass and Mackey, 2000) can be much more elucidating on estimating an accountable rate of uptake.
6. Implications for further research
This study provides further support for the incorporation of focus on form as the incidental attention that teachers and L2 learners pay to form in the context of meaning-focused instruction without disturbing the flow of communication in EFL classes. Whereas previous research addressed reactive focus on form (i.e., corrective feedback), the study reported in this article also included preemptive focus on form. One of the main findings of the study is that in the observed lessons preemptive focus on form occurred more frequently than reactive focus on form. This finding is important because it suggests that researchers and teachers need to pay more attention to preemptive focus on form than has been the case to date.
The findings demonstrate that teacher-initiated preemptive episodes took place more frequently than learner-initiated and reactive LREs. Both of the teachers in this study have had graduate studies in English language teaching and have been professionally teaching English for many years. The decisions they made regarding the use of focus on form techniques especially preemptive ones can be adopted by other EFL teachers. The researchers emphasize the fact that educated and experienced teachers can tap their learners’ linguistic gaps collaboratively (i.e., fill the holes in learners’ interlanguage as described by Swain,1998; Swain and Lapkin, 1995) and deal with form in the context of meaning-focused lessons by raising them preemptively. As mentioned earlier, Mackey et al.’s (2004) study on experienced and inexperienced teachers’ use of incidental focus on form supports this notion. Teacher-initiated preemptive LREs can lubricate the learning process by focusing on diverse linguistic structures as they arise spontaneously during meaning-focused activities. Thus, the use of teacher-initiated LREs can pave the way for learners to move to a higher proficiency, minimize the number of non-target utterances by the learners, and consequently alleviate the need for reactive/learner-initiated focus on form as the findings in this study show. Furthermore, unlike reactive or student-initiated LREs, this type of LREs is not face-threatening, and students will not be embarrassed or negatively affected especially in co-educational contexts in some Asian countries.
Another implication of this study is concerned with the adoption of uptake to gauge the effectiveness of focus on form. It is too premature to make pedagogic decisions on the implementation of different types of focus on form according to this definition. Clearly further investigation into the relationship between uptake and learners’ ability to subsequently use the targeted linguistic items is warranted.
This study also raised some questions which require further examination. Future research studies are suggested to investigate preemptive and reactive LREs in elementary and advanced proficiency levels, particularly in general English classes as opposed to IELTS or TOEFL preparation classes. Moreover, given that the body of previous research on preemptive LREs and the amount of uptake following them is relatively small, additional research on this matter is clearly warranted. A detailed study on the frequency of preemptive LREs in the terms of their linguistic focus and the amount of uptake following teacher- and learner-initiated preemptive LREs would be a fruitful line of inquiry. This study did not investigate teachers’ beliefs and attitudes towards the use of focus on form in general and LRE types in particular. Future studies can examine the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and educational background, and its relationship with their attention to form and use of LRE types within meaning-oriented classes. Finally, this study calls for a redefinition of uptake. As pointed out earlier, uptake can be further analyzed and measured using multiple indices.
7. Conclusions
In summary, incidental focus on form appears to be pedagogically significant due to its potential in creating opportunities for learners to attend to linguistic elements in a meaningful context as they arise incidentally within a broader framework of communication. This study has shown that incidental LREs are frequently utilized in meaning-focused EFL classes, although their frequency and characteristics can vary considerably. Most of the focus on form studies carried out so far have almost exclusively concentrated on reactive LREs. The study has indicated the importance of widening the scope of research to include pre-emptive LREs as well. It explored the frequency of pre-emptive LREs and compared them with the reactive ones. The results revealed a significantly higher rate of pre-emptive focus on form, particularly teacher-initiated LREs than reactive ones. This is indicative of the fact that pre-emptive LREs deserve more attention than they have received so far. Moreover, based on the low frequency of the observed uptake, a new definition of uptake is suggested to incorporate not only uptakes resulting from verbal instances but also other non-verbal written manifestations of uptake such as learner notes. The variations in the findings of this study, in conjunction with those of previous studies of LREs and uptake, show the importance of taking the instructional context into account. The researchers have made some speculations about the findings based on qualitative data collected as part of this study and the Iranian EFL context. Finally, this study raised some interesting questions on pre-emptive LREs and uptake to broaden our understanding of focus on form and its optimal integration into meaning-centered EFL classes.
Acknowledgments:
The authors would like to extend their gratitude to Dr. Oliver, Dr. Nassaji, and Dr. Nunn for their insightful comments and contribution. Special thanks go to the teachers and learners in Goldis Language School for their kind cooperation and support. Moreover, we thank two anonymous reviewers for their meticulous and critical reading of the manuscript. Their suggestions and comments were extremely helpful.
References
Alderson, J.C. and Banerjee J., (2001) Impact and wash back research in language testing, in C. Elder, A. Brown, E. Grove, K. Hill, N. Iwashita, T. Lumley, T. McNamara and K. O’Loughlin (Eds.), Experimenting with uncertainty: Essays in honor of Alan Davies (pp. 150 – 161). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Borg, S. (1998). Teachers’ pedagogical systems and grammar teaching: A qualitative study. TESOL Quarterly 32, 9–38.
Cohen, A. D. (1994). Assessing language ability in the classroom. Second edition. New York: Heinle and Heinle.
Cortazzi, M. & Jin, L. (1996). This way is very different from Chinese ways: EAP needs and academic culture in T. Dudley-Evans & M. Hewings (Eds.), Evaluation and Course Design in EAP (pp.205-216). London: Macmillan.
de Courcy, M. (2002). Learners’ experiences of immersion education: Case studies of French and Chinese. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Doughty, C. (2001). Cognitive underpinnings of focus on form. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and Second Language Instruction (pp. 206–25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Doughty, C., & Varela, E. (1998). Communicative focus on form. In C. Doughty & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp.114–138). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Doughty, C., & Williams, J. (Eds.), (1998a). Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Doughty, C. and Williams, J. (1998b). Pedagogical choices in focus on form. In C. Doughty and J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 197-261). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ellis, R. (2001). Investigating form-focused instruction. Language Learning, 51(1), 1-46.
Ellis, R. (2005). Principles of instructed language learning. Asian EFL Journal, 7(3). Retrieved on April 10, 2006 from http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/sept_05_re.pdf
Ellis, R., Basturkmen, H., & Loewen, S. (2001a). Learner uptake in communicative ESL lessons. Language Learning, 51(2), 281-318.
Ellis, R., Basturkmen, H., & Loewen, S. (2001b). Preemptive focus on form in the ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 35(3), 407-432.
Ellis, R., H. Basturkmen and Loewen, S. (2002). Doing focus on form. System, 30, 419-432.
Farrokhi, F. (2003). A context-based study of varieties of corrective feedback in EFL classrooms. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. School of Education, University of Leeds, UK.
Gass, S. (2003). Input and interaction. In C. J. Doughty and M. H. Long. Malden (Eds.), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (pp. 224-255). MA: Blackwell.
Gass, S. and Mackey, A. (2000). Stimulated recall methodology in second language research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Hatch, E. (1978). Acquisition of syntax in a second language. In J. Richards (Ed.), Understanding second and foreign language learning (pp. 34-70). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Hughes, A. (1989). Testing for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Iwashita, N. (2003). Negative feedback and positive evidence in task-based interaction; Differential Effects on L2 Development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 25, 1-36.
Izumi, S. (2002). Output, input enhancement and the noticing hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 24, 541-577.
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Krashen, S.D. (1998). Comprehensible output? System, 26, 175-182.
Leeser, M. J. (2004). Learner Proficiency and Focus on Form during Collaborative Dialogue. Language Teaching Research, 8(1), 55-81.
Lightbown, P. (1998). The importance of timing in focus on form. In C. Doughty & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 177–196). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Loewen, S. (2004a). Uptake in incidental focus on form in meaning-focused ESL lessons. Language Learning, 54, 153-188.
Loewen, S. (2004b). The occurrence and characteristics of student-initiated focus on form. In H. Reinders, H. Anderson, M. Hobbs, & J. Jones-Parry, (Eds.), Supporting independent learning in the 21st century. Proceedings of the inaugural conference of the Independent Learning Association (pp. 86-93). Auckland: Independent Learning Association Oceania. Retrieved on April 16, 2005 from http://www.independentlearning.org/ila03/ila03_loewen%20.pdf
Long, M. H. (1983). Native speaker/non-native speaker conversation and the negotiation of comprehensible input. Applied Linguistics, 4, 126-141.
Long, M. H. (1991). Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology. In K. de Bot, R. Ginsberg, & C. Kramsch (Eds.), Foreign language research in cross-cultural perspective (pp. 39-52). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In C. Ritchie, T. K. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of Language Acquisition, vol. 2. Second Language Acquisition (pp. 413-468). Academic Press, New York.
Long, M., Inagaki, S., & Ortega, L. (1998). The role of implicit negative feedback in SLA: Models and recasts in Japanese and Spanish. The Modern Language Journal, 82, 357–371.
Long, M., & Robinson, P. (1998). Focus on form: Theory, research and practice. In C. Doughty & J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition (pp. 15-41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lyster, R. (1998a). Negotiation of form, recasts, and explicit correction in relation to error types and learner repair in immersion classrooms. Language Learning, 48, 183-218.
Lyster, R. (1998b). Recasts, repetition, and ambiguity in L2 classroom discourse. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 51-81.
Lyster, R. (2002). The importance of differentiating negotiation of form and meaning in classroom interaction. In P. Burmeister, T. Piske, & A. Rohde (Eds.), An integrated view of language development: Papers in honor of Henning Wode (pp. 381-397). Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
Lyster, R. (2004). Differential effects of prompts and recasts in form-focused instruction. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 26, 399-432.
Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake: Negotiation of form in communicative classrooms. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 37-6.
Mackey, A., Gass, S., & McDonough, K. (2000). How do learners perceive interactional feedback? Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 471-497.
Mackey, A., Oliver, R., & Leeman, J. (2003). Interactional input and the incorporation of feedback: An exploration of NS–NNS and NNS–NNS adult and child dyads. Language Learning, 53, 35-66.
Mackey, A., & Philp, J. (1998). Conversational interaction and second language development: Recasts, responses and red herrings? The Modern Language Journal, 82, 338–356.
Mackey, A., Polio, C., & McDonough, K. (2004). The relationship between experience, education and teachers’ use of incidental focus on form techniques. Language Teaching Research, 8, 301-327.
Mackey, A. & Silver, R. E. (2005). Interactional tasks and English L2 learning by immigrant children in Singapore. System, 33, 239-260.
Morris, F. and Tarone, E. (2003). Impact of classroom dynamics on the effectiveness of recasts in second language acquisition. Language Learning, 53, 325-68.
O’Connell, S. (2002). Focus on IELTS. Essex: Longman.
Oliver, R. (1995). Negative feedback in child NS-NNS conversation. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 17, 459-481.
Oliver, R. (2000). Age differences in negotiation and feedback in classroom and pairwork. Language Learning, 50, 119-151.
Oliver, R. and Mackey, A. (2003). Interactional context and feedback in child ESL classrooms. Modern Language Journal, 87, 519-43.
Panova, I. and Lyster, R. (2002). Patterns of corrective feedback and uptake in an adult ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 36, 573-95.
Pica, T. (2002) Subject matter content: how does it assist the interactional and linguistic needs of classroom language learners? The Modern Language Journal, 86, 1-19.
Poole, A. (2005). The kinds of forms learners attend to during focus on form instruction: A description of an advanced ESL writing class. Asian EFL Journal, 7 (3). Retrieved on March 14, 2006 from http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/September_05_ap.php
Radwan, A. A. (2005). The effectiveness of explicit attention to form in language learning. System, 33, 69-87.
Saville N. (2000). Investigating the impact of international language examinations. Research Notes, 2, 4-7. Cambridge: University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations. Retrieved on January 12, 2006 from
http://www.cambridgeesol.org/rs_notes/offprints/pdfs/RN2p4-7.pdf
Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11, 129-158.
Schmidt, R. (1995). Consciousness and foreign language learning: A tutorial on the role of attention and awareness in learning. In R. Schmidt (Ed.), Attention and awareness in foreign language learning (pp. 1–63). Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Schmidt, R. (2001). Attention. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3–32). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, R., & Frota, S. (1986). Developing basic conversational ability in a second language: A case study of an adult learner of Portuguese. In R. Day (Ed.), Talking to learn: Conversation in second language acquisition (pp. 237–326). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Seedhouse, P. (1997a). Combining meaning and form. English Language Teaching Journal, 51, 336–344.
Seedhouse, P. (1997b). The case of the missing “no”: The relationship between pedagogy and interaction. Language Learning, 47, 547–583.
Sheen, Y. H. (2004). Corrective feedback and learner uptake in communicative classrooms across instructional settings. Language Teaching Research, 8, 263-300.
Shehadeh, A. (2003). Learner output, hypothesis testing, and internalizing linguistic knowledge. System, 31, 155-71.
Storch, N. (2002). Patterns of interaction in ESL pair work. Language Learning, 52, 119-58.
Swain, M. (1985a). Large-scale communicative language testing: A case study. In Y.P. Lee, et al. (Eds.), New directions in language testing (pp. 35-46). Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Swain, M. (1985b). Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In S. Gass & C. Madden (Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 235-253). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Swain, M. (1995). Three functions of output in second language learning. In G. Cook & B. Seildlhofer (Eds.), Principles and practice in applied linguistics: Studies in honor of H. G. Widdowson (pp.125-144). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Swain, M. (1998). Focus on form through conscious reflection. In: Doughty, C., Williams, J. (Eds.), Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition (pp. 64–81). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Swain, M. (2000). The output hypothesis and beyond: mediating acquisition through collaborative dialogue. In Lantolf, J. (Ed.), Sociocultural theory and second language learning (pp. 97–114). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (1995). Problems in output and the cognitive processes they generate: A step towards second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 16, 370-391.
Tsang, W. K. (2004). Feedback and uptake in teacher-learner interaction: an analysis of 18 English lessons in Hong Kong secondary classrooms. RELC, 35, 187-209.
Varonis, E., & Gass, S. (1985). Non-native/non-native conversations: A model for negotiation of meaning. Applied Linguistics, 6, 71-90.
Wilkins, D. A. (1976). Notional syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williams, J. (1999). Learner-generated attention to form. Language Learning, 49, 583-625.
Yule, G. and Macdonald, D. (1990). Resolving referential conflicts in L2 interaction: the effect of proficiency and interactive role. Language Learning, 40, 539-56.
