Unplanned focus on form: Teacher- or student-initiated

Abstract

This paper reports on a qualitative case study of two English for Academic Purposes (EAP) university teachers’ unplanned decisions to focus on language form and the factors impacting on those decisions. These unplanned decisions included all diversions from a lesson in progress to focus on language form, not only corrective feedback, and not only teacher-initiated episodes. Data was collected via videotaping and non- participant observations of the lessons (with fieldnotes), followed up by semi-structured stimulated recall interviews (audio taped) with the teacher participants. It was found that the unplanned teacher -initiated form-focused episodes (FFEs) stemmed primarily from the teachers’ knowledge of the students and the teachers’ experience teaching the course (affirming previous studies) and to a lesser degree a belief in contextualized grammar instruction. However, one significant finding was the teachers’ responses to student- initiated FFE—an area given less attention in current research. Whether or not the teacher took up and continued the student-initiated FFE was found to be dependent upon the teachers’ interpretation of the episodes as an opportunity (positive) or threat (negative). Teacher identity (and emotion), and structure and context of the FFE are found to be underlying reasons for these interpretations.