QUARTERLY In This Issue Ⅲ This issue turns to the controversial place of form in teaching English When TQ published a review of explicit grammar instruction by Rod Ellis in its state of the art issue years ago, we were inundated with critical responses from readers We resorted to publishing just two reader exchanges and posting the rest in our web forum Clearly, this topic engages scholars, and it will continue to attract research and teaching experimentation for some time to come Nina Spada and Patsy Lightbown develop a balanced position on form-focused teaching from a review of the recent research on the place of grammar in task-based and content-based pedagogies They unpack the notion form-focused to show the diverse modes in which grammar instruction can take place in language teaching Teachers could focus students on grammar in an explicit or implicit way, integrated with or isolated from other texts and learning activities They argue that isolated lessons may be necessary to help learners who share the same first language (L1) overcome problems related to L1 influence on their interlanguage, while integrated instruction may be best for helping learners develop the kind of fluency and automaticity that are needed for communication outside the classroom They thus draw attention to the different variables of language acquisition (i.e., age, linguistic background, student preferences, context of use) that may help teachers decide which orientation to form they should adopt Next, Manami Suzuki provides a perspective from the domain of teaching writing, which hasn’t featured well in studies on second language acquisition Examining Japanese university students’ language negotiation in conditions of self revision and of peer revision in EFL writing, she finds that they attended more to form in self revision Though more episodes of negotiation appeared during peer revisions than during self revisions, approximately twice as many text changes occurred during participants’ self revisions Furthermore, while there was more metatalk during peer revisions than during self revisions, self revision TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 42, No 2, June 2008 177 tended to involve more brief solitary searches for word choices or selfcorrections of grammar Based on this finding, Suzuki recommends that peer revision be implemented first to improve the content of writing, and self revision be implemented at a subsequent stage to allow students to improve language forms in their own texts In the next article, focusing on reading, Patricia Kelly, FranciscoXavier Gómez-Bellengé, Melissa M Schulz, and Jing Chen study the outcomes in a reading intervention approach that integrates form in the textual content, teacher–student relationships, and funds of knowledge bilingual children bring from their homes Their pedagogical early intervention for marginalized students from both L1 and English language learner (ELL) backgrounds features differentiated instruction, which provides learners with the opportunity to use reading, writing, and oral language in multiple ways across multiple academic content areas; scaffolding the students’ literacy attempts and encouraging them in risktaking and discovery; incorporating students’ funds of knowledge to increase their motivation to learn; and integrating systematic phonics, one-to-one tutoring, small-group instruction, extensive reading, and cooperative learning Their findings show that reading levels improve for ELLs as well as for L1 students There are significant improvements at the text and phonemic levels as well Sheena Gardner’s article reports on a study of how a British teacher, working within a nationally proscriptive, standards-driven, policy context turns a form-focused phonics practice activity into a word game that engages the imagination, intellect, and identity of 5–6-year-old ELLs She goes on to explain how the traditional pedagogy implicit in the prescribed activity develops into a transformative pedagogy The study shows that the focus on form in itself may not explain much about pedagogical procedures or outcomes Much depends on what theoretical assumptions inform the teacher’s practice and the direction the pedagogical activity takes In the classroom practice observed, while negotiating form students also reconstruct reality playfully The pedagogical experience drives home the point that form doesn’t simply reflect a preexisting reality but makes new realities come into being Gardner’s article anticipates a point Diane Larsen-Freeman makes later in the symposium section She shows how the acquisition of grammar will have different implications for language acquisition and receive different explanations from different theories For example, the correlation between the frequency of occurrence of certain English grammatical morphemes and the attested order of their acquisition in adult ESL learners could be seen to support a behaviorist perspective (i.e., the more frequently a stimulus is paired with a particular response, the more rapidly it is acquired), a cognitivist perspective (i.e., the more opportunities that a learner has to figure out the rules, the more their acquisition 178 TESOL QUARTERLY is facilitated), or an emergentism/complexity-theory perspective (i.e., frequency facilitates pattern morphogenesis and language change) LarsenFreeman argues that a frequency finding of form by itself is vacuous in the absence of a theoretical commitment with which to interpret it Six other senior scholars were invited to contribute to the symposium on theory They adopt various positions in response to Alister Cumming’s opening articulation of the issues facing the profession As a field oriented toward pedagogical practice, scholars are unsure of the role theory plays in our profession Readers often write to inquire if a theoretical article will be published in TQ as a research article or treated as an opinion piece in the Forum section Our contributors point to the dynamic relationship between theory and practice They articulate the different functions theory plays in our profession: to make sense of our practice, to provide coherence to practice, to motivate practice, to inform our practice, or to provide a sense of plausibility to what we Allan Luke takes a critical approach and reminds us how the suppression of theory in some quarters is related to the corporatization of the university and education which treat TESOL as a service profession It is in this culture of education that we are compelled to focus on form as an end in itself without any larger relevance to meaning or funds of knowledge The contributors to the symposium inspire us in various ways to arrest this mechanization of our profession and transform mindless drills on form into creative and transformative experiences, as Sheena Gardner’s teacher does in Britain Suresh Canagarajah Editor IN THIS ISSUE 179