Researchers working in SL education have mostly come back to reconsider the role of grammar in EFL /ESL education in the last two decades. They argue that if the language learners are somehow led to 'notice' or 'focus on' form, their language acquisition process can be enhanced. (c£ Long 1996; Swain 1985 & 1995; Schmidt 1990, 1994& 2001 and Carro1l2000). But we think this emphasis on 'form' may, in practice, prove to have no pedagogic effect or may even be counterproductive if the 'form' recommended to be focused on is not the right one and the pedagogic strategy employed for this purpose is not appropriate. It is now a well-established fact that knowledge of language is 'procedural' in nature and as such it cannot be transferred to the learner. 'Teaching the language' by 'transferring meta-lingual knowledge' should not, thus, be the objective of 'focus on form' pedagogic strategies. Language as a whole and reading more specifically can be learned by the learner's engagement in performing the acts of communication. Thus, focusing the language learner's attention on 'form' should be carried out with the objective of facilitating or rather 'lubricating' the learner's engagement in performing the acts of communication. Most of the first-year university students in EFL situations, upon their arrival to university, realize that they cannot handle the texts of their special interest in English despite the fact that they have accumulated an .extensive amount of knowledge on grammar. This paper, subscribing to the view of 'engagement-in-doing', will discuss ways of assisting such students to learn effective reading strategies through handling their texts with more awareness on the textuality of the texts.
The 'form' we have chosen for the purpose of focusing our learners' attention on is, thus, the textuality of a text rather than the grammaticality of a sentence. The paper sets out to explain what it means by the textuality of a text and how the language learner's awareness about it can promote his/her ability to engage in the discursive process of negotiating a message mediated by a text. The 28 Textuality of a Text or Grammaticality of a Sentence author draws upon his Systemic-Functional inclinations in his characterization of the concept of 'textuality'. He defines 'textuality' as a hierarchical semantic connectedness which originates initially as 'impulses' from the propositions ('processes' or 'verbs' and the elements acting as their satellite arguments). A text can be seen as consisting of a set of hierarchically arranged propositions. But this hierarchy is linearly presented as a set of clause complexes or t-units: a main clause together with all the defining and adverbial clauses hanging around it. We consider the main verb of every t-unit as the principal impulse-generating synaptic agency in a text because its impulse directly contributes to the unfolding of the text, the impulses arising from the dependent clauses adding their force to the rippling effect of the main verb in the t-unit. Apart from the impulse-generating agencies, each text would also embody a set of what we may call 'impulse-directing' agencies, which would reinforce and direct the generated impulses. The thematic elements chosen for every t-unit, the inter-sentential and intrasentential connecting words, the rhetorical organization of the t-units, the topic sentences for each paragraph, and the generic conventions governing the text can be named as examples, which would direct the way the impulses spread out and intersect one another creating what is named the textuality of a text. Perception of textuality of a text would certainly place the reader in a better position to negotiate a message from the discourse process mediated by the text. The readers' awareness about the organization of the t-units in a text, the lexico- grammatical character of their main verbs, the semantico-rhetorical character of the connecting words, the textual rhetorical organization and generic conventions will certainly enhance his/her text- handling capacity. The paper will discuss the pedagogic strategies which the author has longitudinally prepared and the effectiveness of which he has experientially witnessed.