Measuring the Effectiveness of Preemptive Focus on Form through Uptake Sheets

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.