Form-focused instruction (FFI) is designed to draw students’ attention to target features as they are experiencing a communicative need and thus differs considerably from decontextualized language instruction. Foreign language learners in meaning-oriented classrooms with exposure to and engagement with relevant themes and topics have been shown by research to benefit from FFI. But how can teachers effectively engage students with FFI in systematic ways in non-traditional ways during meaning-oriented tasks? This talk will draw on a program of classroom research to illustrate how teachers can do so by intertwining reactive and proactive approaches to FFI.
A reactive approach includes oral scaffolding techniques such as teacher questions and corrective feedback in response to students’ language production that serve to support student participation while ensuring that classroom interaction is a key source of language learning. A reactive approach includes in-the-moment strategies for drawing students’ attention to language or getting them to produce more extended discourse. A proactive approach involves pre-planned instruction designed intentionally to highlight form-meaning connections by means of activities planned in a progression to promote noticing, awareness, and opportunities for practice in meaningful contexts. An illustration of such an approach tried and tested by teachers is an instructional sequence comprising four phases—contextualization, awareness, practice, autonomy—and thus called the CAPA model. Implemented in tandem, these reactive and proactive approaches to FFI serve to hone students’ metalinguistic awareness while engaging them in purposeful use of the target language.