UNIT 10 EXPOSURE AND FOCUS ON FORM

What did you learn in the unit?
As all of us know, exposure is the open gate door for acquire a new language. There are three important ways in which we can learn a new language. First, this is an unconscious process because learners pick the language up without effort, but people need a lot of time to practice and it has to be done in a communicative and realistic context. Second, interaction is the main point because we need to communicate I mean to understand and to be understood by the rest of people. By the way, when people is not able to understand we can paraphrase the whole idea. Third, it is important to do it by focusing on form, in other words, learners should be aware of the pronunciation, word order, spelling and grammatical rules. In short, when learners are exposed they pick up the language immediately through interaction with others.






Focus on form is a topic mentioned form many important writers like for example Catherine Doughty and Jessica Williams in their book (Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition, 1998)  that says “the process by which deliberate language use can be automatized are far from well known. However it is already clear that the starting point for discovering them is the distinction between focus on form and focus on forms” it means that we have to follow a developmental sequence which engages a lot of tasks and factors.
     
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

How will you apply that knowledge in a teaching situation?
Since exposure is an important part of the acquisition of a second language, I would like to apply it with my students through this schedule taken from the internet which I consider useful because it is well organized and easy to be graded.
So I will start from the right; watching TV, is a funny way to learn so I consider 5 hours and 5 mins is enough for them, on the other hand we have listening to music, as this is a boring activity for some of us, only one hour and 75 mins. will be enough, reading aloud facilitates learner to learn new vocabulary so 3 hours and 5 mins is fine. Personally I do not like to sent my students homework because I cannot see their real effort, but it is mandatory to do it, for that reason 3 hours and 5 mins will be okay. Besides that, interaction could be done on a week day it means 7 hours and 5 mins. But the interaction weekend will be done in 6 hours. The last one is captive reading will be done in 5 mins. In conclusion, 28 hours and 25 mins are the total hours per week I will use.

This video provides good information, i invite you to watch it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Catherine Doughty, J. W. (1998). Focus on Form in Classroom Second Language Acquisition. New York.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=904I2Cs5VL8