Focus on form through collaborative dialogue: Exploring task effects

Abstract

In our recent research! we have been using tasks as a stimulus for generating talk among students (Swain and Lapkin, 1998). We have been interested in discovering whether, through output (the activities of talking and/or writing), learners notice gaps in their linguistic knowledge, triggering an analysis of input or of existing internal resources to fill those gaps (Swain and Lapkin, 1995); whether learners' output serves as a hypothesis of how to convey their intended meaning (Swain, 1995); and whether learners use language to reflect on their own (or their interlocutors') language use - that is, whether learners externalise their hypotheses about form and meaning, exposing those hypotheses to scrutiny and discussion (Swain, 1998; 2000). Our research has involved a search for tasks that will generate this sort of student talk with the goal of demonstrating its relationship to second language learning. The tasks we have used to generate such talk engage students in linguistic problem solving, are done collaboratively; and involve the production of a spoken and written text.

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