Comparing Language Teaching Methodologies: Focus on Form vs. Meaning and TBLT Implementation

Focus on Meaning in Language Acquisition

The starting point in Focus on Meaning is not the language, but the learner and learning processes. Lessons with a focus on meaning are purely communicative. It is the learner, not the teacher or textbook writer, who must analyze the L2, including grammar rules, simply from exposure to the input.

Challenges of a Pure Focus on Meaning Approach

There are three primary problems associated with a pure Focus on Meaning approach:

• A number of studies suggest that older children, adolescents, and adults regularly fail to achieve native-like levels in an L2 because they have lost access to whatever innate abilities they used to learn language in early childhood.
• Although considerable progress in an L2 is clearly achieved in Focus on Meaning classrooms, students' productive skills remain “far from native-like, particularly with respect to grammatical competence.”
• A pure Focus on Meaning is inefficient. Studies show rate advantages for learners who receive instruction with attention to code features.

Understanding Focus on Form (FonF)

Focus on Form refers to how attentional resources are allocated and involves briefly drawing students' attention to linguistic elements in a communicative context. Focus on Form is learner-centered: it respects the learner's internal syllabus. It is under learner control: it occurs when he or she has a communication problem, and is likely at least partially to understand the meaning or function of the new form.

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)

Steps in Designing and Implementing a TBLT Program

1. Task-Based Needs Analysis to Identify Target Tasks

   These are the real-world things people do in everyday life: buying a bus pass, asking for street directions, attending a lecture, reading a menu, writing a laboratory report, and so on.

2. Classify into Target Task Types

   For example, making or changing reservations.

3. Derive Pedagogic Task Types

   These tasks are adjusted based on factors such as the learners' age and proficiency level. Pedagogic tasks are the materials and activities teachers and students actually work on in the classroom.

4. Sequence to Form a Task-Based Syllabus

   Sequence the pedagogic tasks to form a task-based syllabus. The search is ongoing for objectives, user-friendly criteria, and parameters of task complexity and difficulty, and some progress has been made.

5. Implement with Appropriate Methodology and Pedagogy

   TBLT must show a meaningful distinction to be drawn between potentially universal methodological principles.