TBLT: Focus on Language

How can we integrate language focus in a Reading lesson?

Pre-Reading phase

Learners can be introduced to new language or recycle previously learnt linguistic features. Pre-teaching and revising vocabulary at this stage, for example, can increase fluency and promote successful task completion but it could divert the learner's attention from meaning to language during the reading task.

Pre-teaching vocabulary can be useful if it involves frequent vocabulary items or rich instructions, which involve the learners in considering variations of the word and synonyms and discussing how the word behaves in the sentence, how it collocates and what register it is used in. Although it is demonstrated that deeper processing of words increases retention rate, rich instruction should focus on high-frequency items because it involves a huge investment on time.

Example of rich instruction in a pre-reading activity

While-Reading phase

In this phase learners read the text in order to achieve the task outcome (such as preparing a diagram based on the information read in the text). At this stage focus on language may be incorporated by means of incidental focus-on-form techniques. You can briefly draw your students' attention to linguistic elements without shifting the primary attention from meaning. 

The most used technique is textual modification which can be done in different ways:

Glossing = refers to the linguistic information provided in the margin of the reading passage, which can be a definition, a synonym, a translation, a picture or a combination of elements. Glosses can promote comprehension by facilitating bottom-up reading processes and incidental learning of second language vocabulary, that is without interrupting the reading process. Some researchers argue that learners need deeper processing to learn new items. Therefore, they could benefit more from activities such as the following:

• writing a text using a list of target words, for which grammatical information, translation and second language explanation are provided;
• filling in a text with missing target words, where words are given to choose from. 

Course participants' glossing exercises can be found here.

Textual Input Enhancement = refers to highliting the relevance of information by using typographical manipulations such as colouring, italicising, underlining and bold-facing. This technique has the advantage of not diverting the reader's attention from meaning; thus, it is important not to provide metalinguistic explanation. The text mustn't be too difficult for the learners to understand. Moreover, input enhancement seems to be more effective when the learners have some prior knowledge of the targeted construction. 

Post-Reading phase

At this stage students can be required to perform activities targeting problematic linguistic features. Language-focused activities are ideal in this phase when they are directed at linguistic features that are relevant for completing the task.

Further References:

Criteria for identifying tasks for TBL
Six types of tasks for TBL
Making time for tasks and still covering the syllabus

Notes and reflections from the MOOC "Teaching ESL/EFL Reading: a Task Based Approach" by University of London - UCL Institute of Education