A Closer Look at Noticing Hypothesis and Focus on Form: An Overview

Abstract

The teaching of language forms especially grammatical and linguistic forms has long occupied a sine qua non role in language classes and course syllabi. The emphasis on the teaching of form has sometimes emerged as the deductive instruction of grammatical structures for example, grammar translation method and sometimes has incarnated as the inductive instruction of grammar and structures for instance, Audio-lingual method (see Richards & Rodgers, 2002). The point in teaching grammar is not whether to teach it or not, but the question is how to teach it from among a wide range of pedagogical options open to language practitioners (see, e.g. Ellis, 1997., Celce-Murcia, 1991). In the last two decades the auspicious paradigm of focus on form and especially Scmidtt's noticing hypothesis (Schmidtt, 1995) have gradually superseded the former methods of grammar teaching. The present article is an attempt to take a closer look on these two models and to consider some of their most prominent features and contributions in the last two decades.