Grammar has always been considered by language learners as well as by those engaged in language education as an essential component of language, and their expectations from and planning for any language education programs have been conditioned accordingly. The definitions of the term grammar and its categories in all languages go back to traditional Latin and Greek grammarians irrespective of their possibly obvious differences and have persisted even now long after the emergence of the scientific study of language which recognizes the unique system of every single language (cf. Saussure, 1916/ 1956). What is grammar and how much is it effective in ‘ learning’ an L2, if at all? This paper will examine the commonsensical understanding of the term grammar, i. e. ‘ the code-system’ as opposed to ‘ grammar’ as ‘ a theory of human experience’ : an agency construing human experience into meaning (cf. Halliday & Matthissen, 2004), i. e. ‘ grammaticality’ as opposed to ‘ textuality’ , arguing that if any recourse to grammar is advocated, as done in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) literature in the form of ‘ focus-on-form’ mediation, this ‘ form’ , rather than being defined in terms of ‘ grammaticality’ , should be ‘ textuality-oriented’ due to the reality that the knowledge accumulated by the learner about the grammaticality is of declarative nature and as such it will not convert into procedural communicative competence. Expanding upon the work done earlier on the topic (cf. Lotfipoursaedi, 2015, 2016, & 2019), the concept of textuality and how its perception by the recipients of a text enables them to handle it will be further discussed and examples of textuality-oriented L2 education pedagogic moves, as the SLA classroom mediation strategies will be examined.

This study examines how five experienced EFL teachers spontaneously initiated preemptive focus on form episodes (FFEs) to draw attention to form in elementary and advanced levels. In addition, the study also investigates the frequency and type of FFEs, i.e. vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation used by five teachers in ten intact communicatively oriented EFL classes. To this end, seventy hours of meaningful interaction between five teachers and their students in five elementary and five advanced EFL classes were observed and audio-recorded. Then, the frequency of preemptive and reactive FFEs were identified, coded, and categorized. The findings revealed that the proficiency of the students did not affect the rate of teacher-initiated focus on form in the observed classes. However, it did affect the general distribution of the linguistic focus of FFEs across proficiencies. The study demonstrates the importance of taking teacher initiated preemptive focus on form into account in EFL studies.

This article reports on an empirical investigation of the teachers' correction of students' spoken errors of linguistic forms in EFL classes, aiming at (a) examining the extent to which teachers' use of different corrective feedback types is related to the immediate types of context in which error correction takes place, and (b) exploring the possibility of integrating form-focused instruction and communicative interaction at the level of error correction. The database is drawn from transcripts of audio-recordings of 25 lessons from five teachers (five lessons from each teacher) totaling 31 hours and including 752 error correction exchanges. Findings indicate that type of context in which error correction takes place affects type of corrective feedback used by L2 teachers for dealing with the students non-target-like forms. The article concludes by arguing that marked recasts' are a good candidate for 'dual focus' strategies for combining focus on form and focus on meaning at the level of error correction.

Uptake is believed to be an indication of the effectiveness of focus on form practices and a possible facilitator for language acquisition. All the accounts of uptake in the literature have been based on the observational data derived from the audio-recordings of the meaning-focused classes. The present study is a novel attempt to account for instances of uptake in 18 hours of meaning-focused instruction in an intact EFL class through an elicitation instrument called uptake sheet. To this end, all instances of teacher- and learner-initiated preemptive Focus on Form Episodes (FFES) and uptake moves following them were identified and coded in the audio-recorded data. Then, the researchers cross-checked the audio-data findings with the ones in the uptake sheets. Compared to the oral uptake moves captured through the audio-data, the analyses revealed a significantly higher frequency of uptake moves in the uptake sheets following teacher-initiated FFEs, but a lower frequency of uptake moves was found in the case of learner-initiated FFEs. The findings would, hopefully, further clarify our conception of the nature and rate of uptake and would pave the way for further research on exploring multiple instances of uptake not accounted for so far in the literature.

The disparity between the linguistic knowledge and the communicative abilities which is often observed in the performance of second language (L2) learners has recently shifted the focus of the researchers toward the FonF paradigm. Having the ability to draw the learners' attention to the target linguistic features in the input, FonF, as an appealing approach is thought to balance between the linguistic knowledge and communicative abilities. The present paper attempts to investigate the conditions under which the acquisition of passive syntactic structures and morphological markers of tense can be maximized, and to examine differences in noticing and learning of syntactic structures vs. morphological markers of tense. On this account, the adult college students, who had enrolled for general English, were selected for the study. They were assigned to three classes, and each class received one of the three different types of instructions: non-enhanced (NoFonF), enhanced (implicit FonF), and enhanced plus practice (explicit FonF). Results of the study revealed that explicit FonF group performed significantly better than the implicit FonF group. The study argues for the adoption of a particular type of explicit instruction - one which promotes noticing and understanding of the target linguistic features.