Focus on form is an SLA term for attention to grammatical forms in a foreign language that arises in the context of carrying out other tasks, involves the practice of noticing, paying attention, creating hypotheses and testing these hypotheses in practice. In this chapter ‘focus on…’ refers to applying the same practices with any aspect related to e-mail communication, for example linguistic, sociolinguistic, strategic, cultural, pragmatic, genre features.
Published in Chapter:
A Task-Based Design for Integrating E-Mail with FL Pedagogy
Shannon Johnston (The University of Queensland, Australia)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 19
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-895-6.ch018
Abstract
A task-based approach to e-mail provides a sound pedagogical orientation for real language interactions between learners and native speakers. The literature suggests that e-mail-oriented tasks are important for successful e-mail experiences (e.g., as evidenced in Kung, 2002; Müller-Hartmann, 2000) and demands a greater pedagogical role for e-mail (e.g., Marcus, 1995; O’Dowd, 2004; Warschauer, 1995). Nunan’s concept of task-based teaching (2004) appropriately links e-mail and pedagogy. This chapter presents a discussion of e-mail tasks within the Nunan task-based framework, and follows it with evidence from a study of tasks in senior secondary Indonesian as a FL classes in Queensland, Australia. With this proposal, the author hopes to inform teachers, and stimulate research of task-based e-mail as a pedagogically rigorous teaching method. The impacts of context and a teacher’s personal theories on outcomes are areas requiring further research attention.