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ESL forum >
Techniques and methods in Language Teaching > focucing on forms or form in teaching
focucing on forms or form in teaching
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akvillina
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focucing on forms or form in teaching
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Hello dears,
Can any body tell me the differences between these two?What does we mean by saying:"focus on form"and again"focus on forms" in ELT
thanks alot
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7 Dec 2011
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almaz
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Mahnaz, do you mean inflectional form? This would refer to the variation you �d find in a given lexeme. For verbs, this would be preterite or present tense (e.g. talked/talks) and for nouns, singular or plural number (e.g. dog/dogs), for example.Some grammarians distinguish between primary and secondary verb-forms:
Primary = preterite (talked), 3rd person singular present (talks), plain present (talk) [he talked about his dog, he talks about his dog, They talk about their dogs]
Secondary = plain form (talk), gerund-participle (talking), past participle (walked) [he might talk about his dog, he is talking about his dog, he has talked about his dog]
Obviously, there are many other types of form (reflexive/non-reflexive pronouns and their case-forms, comparatives/superlatives etc) but I hope this might be something to be going on with.
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7 Dec 2011
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PhilipR
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Your question is too vague to give a meaningful answer. We need context - where did you hear or see this and what was discussed?
Focus on form could be focus on the way you do something; compare form vs content, form vs function, form vs style etc.
Forms could be verb forms, but for all we know they might be some kind of forms you need to fill in before or after the lesson.
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7 Dec 2011
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akvillina
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Sorry about my incomplete question
I mean Focus on form in teaching
we have so many articles about focusing on form or forms in task based language teaching.And i dont know what the form or forms mean there.
I am in time pressure so I can not read all of them or search the meaning in them.
For example we have focus on meaning activities or focus on form activities what does they mean?
thanks in advance
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7 Dec 2011
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cindyfreksen
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Focus on form is when you look at the individual elements that construct a text/sentence.
It is the opposite of focus on meaning, where the aim is to get the gist of what the text is about.
Task based learning (TBL) uses both these ideas to stimulate learning - Pupils have tasks that involve negotiation of form, where they maybe have to discuss that conjugation of verbs for example. Negotiation of meaning is encouraged when pupils have to discuss what a text is about.
Rod Ellis has written a great book about TBL where he explains all of this, I can �t remember what it is called but try to google ellis and TBL
Hope this helps
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7 Dec 2011
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