Focus on Form

Abstract

This Cambridge Element examines the role and nature of focus on form in second language acquisition. An overall assessment of the role of instruction and the nature of language is provided. Instruction might have a facilitative role in the rate of acquisition. The Element briefly reviews empirical research examining the relative effects of different types of focus on form and presents some of the key implications for second language learning and teaching. An effective focus on form type is one that is input and meaning oriented. Manipulating input to facilitate language processing and form-meaning connections might enhance second language acquisition.

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“…It also is well combined with other approaches such as communicative, content-based or computer-mediated language teaching. Its effectiveness has been proven in the works of researchers around the world (Ellis, 1997;Lynch, 2009;Willis&Willis 2007;Benati, 2021).…”

“…A range of researchers have focused on the effectiveness of different types of form focus, as well as the specifics of their practical application in the context of TBLT (Benati, 2021;Chrissou, 2020;Değirmencioğlu, 2023). Some researchers have studied the timing and nature of corrective feedback provided during tasks, investigating the impact of immediate or delayed feedback on learners' accuracy and fluency (Chrissou, 2020; Pouresmaeil and Gholami, 2023).…”

“…R. Ellis defined consciousness raising as a pedagogic activity where the learners are provided with L2 data in some form and required to perform some operation on it, the purpose of which is to arrive at an explicit understanding of some linguistic properties of the target language (Ellis, 1997). During consciousness-raising task, L2 learners develop explicit knowledge about how the target language works and are pushed to negotiate meaning (Benati, 2021).…”

Rod Ellis's essential bookshelf: Focus on form

“…I have remained true to the central feature of Long's definitionnamely, that focus on form is tied in some way to the performance of a communicative task. Once this is lostas I think it is, for example, in Benati (2021) where the term is used to refer to non-task found in processing instruction then the construct does indeed become vacuous.…”

A review of the effect of textual enhancement on L2 learners’ grammar acquisition: An analysis of topic familiarity and TE types

“…Among the various techniques, textual enhancement was widely used in empirical studies to examine the effectiveness of the enhancement techniques on grammar acquisition because it is a less obtrusive technique to implicitly draw learners' attention to the target forms (Lee, 2021). Textual enhancement aims to make certain parts of the input texts (written or oral) more salient and thereby to facilitate form-meaning connections (Benati, 2021). Typographical cues such as italicizing, underlining, embolding and coloring are commonly used in the related studies.…”