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most students in the study intially preferred deductive presentations – of the Murphy (English Grammar in Use) type, but after experiencing a more discovery-oriented approach, a signifcant number ‘came round’.

I.e. guided discovery applies as much to textual features as it does to lower-level language features such as vocabulary and grammar.

model (observe – hypothesise – experiment). In similar fashion, Mike McCarthy and Ron Carter (1995) offered, as an alternative to PPP, their III model: illusration – interaction – induction), which is clearly discovery based.

A passive knowledge affects learners’ competence more than performance and befits accuracy more than fluency. So putting a big emphasis on rules is a back-to-front approach; placing form before meaning, knowledge before skills and study before learning.

This story suggests to me that conscious learning of rules is likely to be effective only under certain conditions, e.g. when the learner is motivated (as in Isherwood’s case by having a ‘gap’ in his competence pointed out to him) and, even more important perhaps, when the learner is ready — i.e. at the right stage in his/her interlanguage development. I

“When we use language in real communication, grammar manisfests itself in ways that seem to have little to do with the conscious application of these linguistic facts (=rules). Grammar seems to be more like a process” (p. 1).

The actual degree of guidance can vary a lot. It might simply take the form of such attention-grabbing devices as a conspicuously frequent number of occurences of the targeted item in a text (also known as input flood), or the use of design features, such as enlarged font, to highlight the item in question (input enhancement).

n conjunction with the question sequence, or as an alternative to it, new data may be progressively made available to the learners, challenging them to review and restructure their current state of knowledge.  Indeed, Pit Corder went so far as to argue that “teaching is a matter of providing the learner with the right data at the right time” (1988, p. 33).

typically mediated by questions, each question challenging learners to advance their understanding one further step.

n the first year teachers were using multimodal texts to teach how meaning is conveyed and then transferring the reading into writing rather than teaching multimodality.  Teachers in KS1 have always used picture books but now the focus was on use of colour, common themes, the effect of the picture as well as text and conscious reading gesture.  Teachers were allowing pictures to aid comprehension and consequent writing rather than overlooking them. 

iving them the confidence to explicitly teach it, along with how it is effective in conveying meaning and this helped the project to keep up momentum.  This worked well with the teachers who had been with us during the first year and some teachers who were new to the project but were able to catch up through sharing in their experience

Year 2 Children were talking about links between modes – ‘If we didn’t have the pictures we wouldn’t know how they’re feeling’ ‘The words and pictures try to trick each other’ ‘It’s like the pictures and text are having an argument’ Supported work at KS5 with ‘aspects of narrative’ where the word multimodal is used all the time

What is the discovery technique?

Grammar can either be taught explicitly or implicitly. When we talk about an explicit approach to grammar we are talking about stating directly, usually at the beginning of a particular activity, what the grammar is. For example, “Today we are looking at the third conditional.” On the other hand an implicit approach to grammar is one where the students are ‘led’ to the grammar through a series of steps – this is what is meant by the ‘discovery technique’. In other words, the ‘discovery technique’ aims to lead students towards a generalized grammar rule or pattern.

As a viewer, we are positioned as quite dominant here. This high angle shot, looking down on the sea of people, most of who are looking up to us, portrays them as much less powerful than we, the viewers, are. While the ropes and masts take some of our attention, it is the sheer number of passengers staring upwards that is a salient feature of this photo. Historically we know that most have given all they have to travel to the land of opportunity, often leaving family and friends behind in their birth country. How might an individual feel in the midst of this? Can one historical photo give insight into the emotional experiences of these people? How does this photo suggest we "should" feel about immigrants in general? By explicitly combining knowledge of the photo’s composition and its implied power relations, teachers can help students understand how some images can create empathy, while some can suggest superiority or dominance. It is here that reading a graphic novel such as The Arrival can provide another "account" of the immigrant experience. Compare the historic photo here to the images on Shaun Tan’s website, taken from The Arrival. The images of the harbor entry are particularly poignant, when compared to similar historical photos of the Statue of Liberty who greeted ships coming to Ellis Island. Tan studied many photos and documents from that period and students can find many points of connection when viewing the graphic novel with other historical photos.

but for teachers to clearly understand how to guide students in reading visual elements. Making meaning, extracting relevant information, developing relevant, shared metalinguistic terms to describe what is seen, and understanding how images and multimodal texts position viewers are key skills. T

One of the basic principles of a task-based approach is that the task phase, or skills work if you like, comes before language study. There are two very good reasons for this: If you begin by presenting the grammar and then go on to a task, learners will be concerned primarily with producing the language that has been highlighted rather than using all the language they can. If this lesson were to be about the going to future, for example, it would begin with a very sharp focus on going to, probably with lots of controlled repetition. When the class moved on to identify questions to do with the future they would not be thinking about meaning, about doing things with language, they would simply be trying to produce samples of a particular form.

So a task-based lesson can and should focus on specific language forms, but that focus should come at the end of a teaching cycle. And a series of task-based lessons can and should provide systematic exposure to the language, both grammar and lexis. But meaning always comes before form in sequencing activities.

At the next stage, the planning phase, the teacher asks learners to work in groups to prepare a spokesperson who will represent the group in the final (report) phase of the task cycle and present their questions to the class. They have already prepared their ideas and they are preparing to present them in a more formal setting speaking to the class as a whole. They will recycle their questions with a greater focus on accuracy. Of course this does not mean that they will be 100% accurate, but they will be focusing on accuracy within a meaningful context.

As long ago (relatively speaking) as 1998, Linda Stone, formerly of Apple, coined the term ‘continuous partial attention’ (CPA)  to characterise the kind of restless digital flitting that results from the need to stay constantly informed and in touch. Translated to a classroom context, CPA would hardly seem conducive to learning.

As psycholinguists Nick Ellis and Peter Robinson put it: “What is attended is learned, and so attention controls the acquisition of language itself” (2008, p. 3). Likewise, Dick Schmidt (2001) argues that only through the exercise of attention is input converted to intake: “Unattended stimuli persist in immediate short-term memory for only a few seconds at best, and attention is the necesary and sufficient condition for long-term memory storage to occur” (p. 16)

from a cognitivist perspective, teaching might well be defined as the ‘management of attention for pedagogical purposes’. Managing attention means both drawing attention to the subject at hand, and drawing attention away from whatever might be a distraction