Doing focus-on-form Rod Ellis*, Helen Basturkmen, Shawn Loewen Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Received 17 April 2002; received in revised form 14 June 2002; accepted 17 June 2002 Abstract ‘Focus-on-form’ refers to a particular type of form-focused instruction - the treatment of linguistic form in the context of performing a communicative task. This article considers the rationaleforthisapproachtoteachingformasopposedtothemoretraditional‘focus-on-forms’ approachwherelinguisticfeaturesaretreatedsequentially.Itdescribessomeofthemainmetho- dologicaloptionsforattendingtoformincommunication.Theseareconsideredundertwomain headings; ‘reactive focus-on-form’ and ‘pre-emptive focus-on-form’. The advantages and dis- advantagesofthevariousoptionsarealsodiscussed.Finally,somegeneralquestionsrelatingto thepracticeoffocus-on-formareidentifiedasabasisforfurtherdiscussionandresearch. # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Language instruction; Communicative tasks; Focus-on-form 1. Introduction The teaching of linguistic forms, 1 especially grammar, continues to occupy a majorplaceinlanguagepedagogy.Discussionsofhowtoteachformusuallyconsist of accounts of the various pedagogical options available to the teacher and the relativeadvantagesofeachoption(see,e.g.Ellis,1997).Somewhatlessattentionhas been paid to the actual methodological procedures that teachers use to focus on System 30 (2002) 419–432 www.elsevier.com/locate/system 0346-251X/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0346-251X(02)00047-7 * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: r.ellis@auckland.ac.nz (R. Ellis), h.basturkmen@auckland.ac.nz (H. Basturkmen), s.loewen@auckland.ac.nz (S. Loewen). 1 The term ‘form’ is often used to refer exclusively to ‘grammar’. However, in this article it is used more generally to refer to any aspect of linguistic form—phonological, graphological, lexical or gram- matical.Itshouldalsobenotedthattheterm‘form’doesnotexcludeconsiderationsofmeaning.Whileit is possible to attend solely to form, as for example when the pronunciation of an isolated word becomes the focus, in many cases attention to form involves consideration of the meaning (function) that a parti- cular form conveys.