This volume for second language teachers builds on two principles of structured input (SI; VanPatten, 2004): the primacy of meaning principle and the first noun principle. After an overview of SI, Farley provides chapter-length explanations of teaching activities based on the two SI principles and concludes with a chapter on recent SI research. The three core SI activity-preparation chapters are organized around (a) an introduction to the SI principle focused on in the chapter, (b) a research review, (c) examples from various languages, (d) “principles in practice” to guide teachers in writing SI activities, (e) sample studies, and (f) suggested readings. The technique recommended for activities involves the creation of controlled tasks that limit information available to students so that only one grammatical point is salient. For example, an activity on English subject-verb agreement requires the learner to select the correct present tense verb for a given subject; one singular subject (“Sarah McLachlan”) and one plural subject (“Bono and the Edge”) are followed by only two choices: one with a verb in the singular (“travels all over the world”) and one with a verb in the plural (“play the guitar”). The logic of this activity is that language learners look to meaning first and, therefore, often overlook form, so activities can force focus on form by limiting content and restricting grammatical choice. (My own experience of this type of grammar drill is that students have a 50% chance of getting the correct answer without having to think about either meaning or form.)
My background is in English for academic purposes (EAP) for students preparing to enter study in an English-medium college or university and in research on English from a functional language-in-use perspective (e.g., Halliday, 1994; Sinclair, 2003). As I read Farley's discussion of language teaching materials, I felt as though I had moved into a different world of language analysis, learning, and teaching from the one I usually inhabit: First, the EAP students with whom I work are substantially different in their needs, interests, and proficiency than the students assumed by Farley; second, Farley's presentation of grammar takes a discourse-free approach in which form can be separated from meaning and use.
Although Farley wants to widen readership to include SLA researchers, his audience will probably be foreign language teachers in American colleges and universities who teach undergraduates in their initial term(s) of language study. This audience is implicit in sample activities and assumptions about learner interests, purposes, and proficiency. Activity content often depends on information about politicians, athletes, musicians, and undergraduate life; learners are not presented as having particular real-world needs for language development. Moreover, the focus is on initial stages of learning rather than the development of intermediate or advanced proficiency, and materials do not acknowledge the linguistic differences between conversation and various written genres.
Farley's approach to grammar uses a list of grammatical forms, which are then contextualized. Although this approach is traditional in language teaching, research has demonstrated that grammar is more accurately viewed from a discourse perspective, with grammar found in contexts rather than grammar being artificially placed in teacher-created contexts (Byrd, 1998); that is, past tense is a grammatical feature of certain types of discourse, so learners must associate its form with contexts in which the form is required.
To effectively influence practice in grammar teaching, SLA specialists should consider research that places forms in the context of particular communication types, such as Bardovi-Harlig's (1995) studies of tense in narrative or Doughty and Varela's (1998) work with tense in middle-school science writing. Additionally, specification of learner characteristics would avoid overgeneralization of principles in ways that suggest that one size fits all.
