Unit 10 - Exposure and focus on form

What are exposure and focus on form?

Across the centuries people have studied how foreign languages are learnt. Many experts now believe that one main way we learn a foreign language is by exposure to it, i.e. by hearing and/or reading it all around us and without studying it. They say we then pick it up automatically, i.e. learn it without realising. This, of course, is the main way in which children learn their first language (the language they learn as a baby).

Acquisition	Interaction	Focus on form
-Learners use the internet to find recipes for how to make their favourite dishes. -Learners listen to two songs which are their favourite English songs. -Learners look at a map of their town and discuss where to build a new sports centre.	-A group of learners explains to the rest of the class how to make a paper plane. -Learners explain to one another why a certain multiple-choice answer on a reading text must be correct. -The learners tell one another about a good book they have just read. -Learners look at a map of their town and discuss where to build a new sports centre.	-Learners proofread and correct the first draft of their compositions. -A learner says ‘I go to see a great film yesterday’; the teacher says ‘past tense’. -The learners see how many different prefixes they can find in a text. -The learners complete gapped sentences with the right tense of the verbs in brackets.

Reference:

Spratt, M., Pulverness, A., & Williams, M. (2012). The TKT Teaching Knowledge Test Course Modules 1,2 and 3 (Vol. Second edition). United Kingdom: Cambridge English.