FOCUS ON FORM OR ON MEANING: THAT'S JUST THE TROUBLE1

Dr. Hasanbey Ellidokuzoğlu

I would like to start my presentation with a spectacular demonstration.

(After walking a few steps) Did you see anything spectacular? No? In fact,
whatever happens in my body when I take a few steps is probably more
spectacular than what happens in a spaceship when it takes a trip to the moon.
Yet we are hardly aware of the amazing complexities involved in the execution
of easy-looking tasks such as walking, eating or breathing. The underlying
reason for such ignorance is that an overwhelming portion of these tasks are
handled by subconscious mechanisms functioning without awareness.
The curious thing about these subconsciously-handled tasks is that once
we think consciously about them, we run the risk of spoiling their natural
process. For instance while walking, our arms and legs at opposite sides move in
tandem automatically. But once we think consciously as to how to move these
limbs, we start walking awkwardly. This is most typically observed in training
novice soldiers. You tell them to move their left leg along with their right arm
and you spoil the whole process.
A similar confusion or negative intervention happens in the field of
foreign language learning. Before explaining how this interference takes place,
however, I need to touch upon the Interface versus Non-Interface discussion in
our field. This has become a hotly debated issue ever since Krashen put forward
the distinction between the two processes: acquisition and learning.
Acquisition is a subconscious process which is handled by a domain-
specific mechanism called LAD. Learning, on the other hand, is a conscious
process handled by the domain-general mechanism which also takes care of
other types of learning such as learning math, learning how to type or drive, etc.
The result of acquisition is subconscious which is called Acquired Competence
(AC). The result of learning is called Learned Competence (LC), which is
conscious. Krashen believes that AC and LC represent two distinct knowledge
systems in the brain, between which there exists no transfer. His view is
generally called Non-Interface position, which can be summarized as follows:

Non-Interface Position (Non-IP)

AC (No link) LC

Exposure to Conscious
Input Learning
(FOM) (FOF)

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PAPER PRESENTED AT 3RD BAHÇEŞEHİR UNIVERSITY ENGLISH PREPARATORY PROGRAM
INTERNATIONAL ELT CONFERENCE, ISTANBUL, 14 MAY 2011

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 Krashen’s Non-IP position runs counter to the intuitions of, many L2
teachers and learners who believe that consciously learned rules are later
converted into subconsciously acquired rules through practice. In his 1981
article, for example, Sharwood Smith suggested that:
“while the empirical evidence for the impermeability and primacy of the
acquisition device in the second or foreign language learners is hotly
contested, there is every reason to accept the older, intuitively attractive
version which says that explicit knowledge may aid acquisition via
practice.”

This mainstream thinking can be schematized as follows:

Interface Position (IP)

Conscious practice

AC ---------------------------------------- LC

Exposure to Conscious
Input Learning

Rather than viewing AC and LC as distinct systems, IP advocates see

them as the end points along a continuum. IP does not deny the fact that learners
acquire their L2 through exposure to input. What they also suggest, however, is
the presence of an alternative path of conscious learning and practice, which
they believe will also lead to acquisition.
To judge which of these two viewpoints reflect the reality better, we need
to examine their explanatory power in accounting for observed phenomena.
One observation in this regard is that we “do” acquire certain rules after learning
and practicing them. IP advocates explain this “learn-and-then-acquire
experience” through their alternative path. Krashen, on the other hand, accounts
for the same observation by suggesting that we acquire the previously-learned
rules not because we have learned and practiced them but because we have
received comprehensible input bearing these rules in the meantime. In other
words, he suggests that there is just a temporal relationship between learning
and acquisition, not a causal one.
There are other observations which are explained by both sides in their
own way, but I will not go into them because of time limitations. The important
thing here is to focus on disconfirming evidence. And this comes from studies
on the “natural order”. As you would know; in picking up the grammar rules of
an L2 there is a natural order, which is different from the teaching/learning order
in classroom context. For example, third person singular -s is an item which is

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taught very early in classroom context. This consciously learned item, however,
cannot be easily acquired as it is one of the latest acquired items along the
natural order. I personally have not acquired it yet. In the unedited version of my
PhD dissertation, for example, there were some seventy 3rd person singular –s
mistakes. Does this mean that I do not know this rule? No. I do know the rule
and in my grammar classes I even teach it to my students. But when it comes to
fluent production (while speaking or writing), I miss it quite frequently. In other
words, although I have it in my conscious LC, I do not have it in my AC. While
Non-IP accounts this fact through the independence of LAD from conscious
intervention, IP cannot. If there were an alternative path, it would be possible to
acquire any item at any time by exploiting this path. But decades of research has
shown that this is not the case.

“[t]he review of research on the effect of instruction on SL [second

language] development suggests...[that] formal SL instruction does not
seem able to alter acquisition sequences. (Larsen-Freeman & Long,1991,
p. 321)

Research has also shown that conscious attempts to teach grammar does
not have a long-lasting effect on the subconscious competence of L2laerners as
indicated by a former IP advocate:

35 years of research has not produced any substantial proof that making
people aware of formal features of the L2, whether by means of
correction or explanation or both, has any long-term effect, at least where
basic morpho-syntax and phonology is concerned. (Sharwood Smith,
2008, p. 5)

Despite these findings however focus on form is still a highly

recommended strategy in learning foreign languages. In fact, the problem is not
with "focus on form" but with “focus on form and meaning at the same time".
After all, even advocates of Non-IP like Krashen talks about the merits of
teaching grammar consciously. Consciously learned grammar rules do not turn
into subconscious AC, but they enable you to understand input more easily. For
example, it is not advisable not to teach 3rd person singular –s just because it is a
late acquired item. If you don’t, each time a learner encounters a verb such as
“goes” he may be puzzled and consider it as a new word whose meaning should
be looked up in a dictionary, which means a waste of time. Instead you teach
that simple grammar rule (not with expectation of its becoming AC but) with the
aim of easing the comprehension process. If comprehension is enhanced,
acquisition of other items in input will be facilitated. In that sense, learning
helps acquisition in an indirect way. So, as long as you teach grammar in a
separate session when conscious focus is only on form, there is no problem. The

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problem starts when you try to combine "focus on form" with "focus on
meaning" at the same time. And this typically what we are advised to do in class
by the IP advocates:

Interface Position (IP)

Production practice (FOF & M)

AC ---------------------------------------- LC

Exposure to Conscious
Input Learning
(FOF & M) (Induction) (FOF)

According to IP perspective, the input we present to our students in class

should be built around the target structure of the day. The students who are
exposed to such input are required not only to understand the message but also
analyze its grammar, especially the target structures. And after a while they are
supposed to practice the target structures by getting involved in meaningful
conversations. Here is the IP advice from the horse’s mouth:

“the learner is required both to use the structures specified by the teacher,
and to communicate meanings for a purpose. In such activities, the focus
might be distributed in equal proportion between forms to be produced
and the meanings to be conveyed” (Littlewood, 1991, 89)

Inserting a specific structure into our utterances while communicating

meaningfully is something that we cannot manage even in our mother tongue.
I want to show you a specific example from a textbook:

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 This is a unit from a textbook which I used as a prep-teacher years ago. As
you can see there is a mad killer who first leaves note and then kills a doctor.

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After some futile attempts to capture him, the police finally decide to call a
famous detective named Leo. But the charismatic detective says that “it can’t be
done”. When I first read this sentence, I thought he was the killer himself as he
was discouraging others to find the criminal. When I read the rest of the story,
however, I found that this prediction of mine is not right as they found another
man as the killer with the help of Leo. So what was that awkward sentence
doing there? Then I noticed that the structure of day was “passives with
modals”. So the famous detective is the poor victim of focus on form!
Now, this is a sentence produced by a “native speaker”, “professional”
coursebook writer, who had “a few years” to contemplate what to write. What
do we want from our students to do in class (if we are to follow the IP advice)?:
We want our “non-native”, “non-professional” learners to produce meaningful
sentences while “speaking” when they have just “a few seconds” to
contemplate to figure out to say.
A more dramatic problem caused by FOF&M occurs when learners are
processing input. When we consciously focus on the grammar of incoming
messages, our level of understanding is lowered considerably. As vanPatten
puts it:

“Comprehension of content suffered severely when learners also

attempted to attend form.” (VanPatten, 1996:69)

In other words, when we focus on form, meaning might be lost. And

when meaning is lost, acquisition cannot take place since meaning is an
essential component of from-meaning mapping process. The following figures
shows what happens when we consciously focus on meaning or form:

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 To illustrate the issue further, let us give an example form another domain.
Suppose that you are carrying a glass of water while moving up or down the
staircase. Conventional wisdom advise you not to look at the glass but to the
steps in our front. Curiously enough, you are more likely to spill the water when
you ambitiously concentrate our eyes on the glass. Now, let’s analyze what’s
happening.
The problem here is to do with the requirement to feed the balance center
in the brain-stem with the visual feedback about our immediate environment, i.e
about the steps in front of you. In order for the relevant parts (let’s say the
balance module) of the brain to send signals to our hand/arm carrying the water,
the balance module needs the visual input picturing the position of the body in
relation to its immediate surrounding area, not the visual image of the glass in
your hand. The info about the glass is automatically sent to the balance module
through the detectors on your joints and muscles in the arm. So you do not need
to worry about the position of the glass; it is already taken care of. Your
responsibility is to nourish the balance module with visual info about the steps.
Once this visual data is collected through the eyes (and this is realized when you
look at the steps, not the glass), the balance module automatically makes the
required calculations and sends continual signals in a way to ensure the minute
calibration of the movement of the arm & hand in question and you don’t spill
the water. When you focus your eyes on the glass, however, the necessary visual
feedback for minute calibration of hand/arm movement is lost or its quality gets
poorer, and the balance is lost.
Turning back to language acquisition, when we direct our conscious
attention to formal (grammatical) aspects of incoming messages during input
processing, we deny the language module of the necessary semantic feedback
which can only be properly obtained through conscious attention on meaning. In
other words, ambitious attempts to consciously focus on form and meaning at
the same time gets in the way of the form-meaning process in language

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acquisition. As a result, while trying to kill two birds with one stone, you are
killing none but your chance to acquire something new.

The two problems cited so far is about some rather minor problems
stemming from FOFM during production and comprehension. After all, forcing
students to consciously focus on two things at a time is nothing but wishful
thinking on the part of teachers; they may design some activities to accomplish
this but human brain is not designed that way. In other words, you can lead a
horse to water but you cannot make him drink. But when you deprive the
learners form (or minimize the amount of) the crucial nourishment, i.e. the input,
that’s the real damage. Even a more severe problem associated with FOFM,
therefore, is that it limits the amount of input that L2 learners can get. If you
have the structural concern of the IP advocates then the only input that you can
use is the input provided in the course-book which is build around the structure
of the day. This means just a few pages of reading and few minutes of listening a
day while form-free “Free Voluntary and listening” enables you to enjoy ample
amount of input.

Pedagocial implications:
What is the moral of story then for the teachers? Our basic responsibility
as teachers is to provide our students with ample amount of input and to make
this input as comprehensible as possible. In other words, the only way we can
contribute to the development of AC is through the manipulation of semantic
component of input not its grammatical aspects. Just make input
comprehensible, LAD will take care of the rest. It will automatically and
unavoidably acquire the new structures in input by processing it in its own way.
Even if you know how LAD processes input and how grammar structures
are represented in LAD and even if you discover all these during input
processing, it will still be of no help for AC development as long as this
discovery is realized at a conscious level. Again as Sharwood Smith puts it:

The processing of the PSs [phonological structures] and SSs [syntactic

structures] takes place beyond the range of conscious introspection and so
any attempt to influence its operations directly, by explicit input
enhancement, say, is doomed to failure, and so far this is supported by
mainstream research in SLA. (Sharwood-Smith, 2008, p. 10-11)

In sum, if each piece of input has a semantic content and grammatical

component, it is the former rather than the latter which we can manipulate to
boost the acquisition process. Being free from our conscious intervention, the
latter is something that we do no need to worry about. After all, acquisition is
what LAD is able to pick up on its own during input processing. The only thing
it demands from us is to make the meaning clear; that’s it.

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 So, just make your students walk along the interlanguage path as naturally
as possible. When they are freed from the chains of form-focused instruction,
they will most definitely reach their destiny faster.