Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

FonF and task-based learning
A central component of TBL for many people is the idea of FonF mentioned in
Chapter 2 – discussion of formal aspects of language following non-language-
based practice. While the use of tasks in itself is in the direct line of descent from
the exploitation phase of audio-lingualism through communicative language
teaching, FonF is the distinctive ingredient of the TBL style. In this view, it is ben-
eficial to focus on language form, provided this emerges out of a task rather than
being its starting point or sole rationale. To some extent this modifies the basic
TBL tenet that language itself is not the focus of the task, by letting language form
in through the back door.
Though explanation of forms has been extensively discussed as part of FonF, there
are comparatively few examples of what it means in practice. Dave and Jane Willis
(2007) give the example of a task based on a text about a suicide attempt. They sug-
gest that the teacher can exploit this to show the various uses of the reflexive pro-
noun in the text, such as ‘Jim Burney himself’ and ‘kill himself’, and to introduce
other uses such as ‘help yourself’. This is an informal, commonsense view of gram-
mar based on some frequent uses of reflexives. Since the tasks have not been
designed with language in mind, such follow-up activities are necessarily ad hoc and
unsystematic (unless, of course, the teacher cheats and works a language point into
the design of the task).
The FonF idea thus abandons one aspect of audio-lingualism that had still 
been implicitly accepted by communicative teaching, namely Rivers’ assumption
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(3): ‘Analogy provides a better foundation for foreign language learning than
analysis’. The FonF approach harks back to earlier models of language teaching,
which also saw explicit grammar as a follow-up activity. FonF is foreshadowed, for
example, in Article 4 of the International Phonetics Association manifesto of the
1880s: ‘In the early stages grammar should be taught inductively, complementing
and generalising language facts observed during reading.’ It resembles the tradi-
tional teaching exercise known as ‘explication de textes’, which was an integral