TEACHER-INITIATED FOCUS ON FORM (INCIDENTAL GRAMMAR TEACHING) AND LEARNER UPTAKE IN AN EFL COMMUNICATIVE CLASS

This study is attempted to investigate one type of grammar teaching which occurs incidentally in communicative English classes and the students responses which come after the grammar explanation is given by teacher. The objectives of the study are directed to describe in what context of communicative class the teacher initiated PFF, how the teacher taught grammar in PFF sessions, and how the learners uptake in teacher-initiated PFF sessions was. The participants of the study are one English teacher and forty students at grade ten from two different English classes at Madrasah Aliyah Negeri I (MAN I) Medan. Qualitative method was used in this study. The data were collected by conducting interview and classroom observation in EFL communicative English classes. The findings indicated that there are four contexts in which the teacher initiated PFF, namely; when the teacher wanted to highlight a particular point of grammar found in the learning material, when there was a need to expand the students question about lexical meaning of a word found during a game activity into grammar explanation, when the teacher found a particular point of grammar in the students utterance in students dialog performance, and when the student did not understand the teachers utterance or instruction. The ways the teacher teaches grammar to the students are both deductive and inductive. In a1dition, the dimensions of grammar that the teacher focused on were meaning, form, and use. The learner uptakes resulted in two major points. First, when grammar is presented deductively, the learner uptakes result in three variants, apply, recognize, and need application, which go into two categories, successful for apply and unsuccessful, for recognize and need application. Second, when the grammar teaching is explained inductively, the learner uptake results in two kinds apply (successful) and recognize (unsuccessful), with the absence of need application. In addition, apply dominated in the learner uptakes when the grammar teaching was presented in inductive way. In other words, using inductive approach in teaching grammar during communicative English classes gives more opportunity for students to get successful uptake rather than using deductive way.