Applied Linguistics and Language Teacher Education by Nat Bartels

BIGELOW AND RANNEY 193instruction seems low. Of the grammatical forms targeted, verb tenses received muchattention, especially in the thematic units.In summary, participants included form-related objectives fairly infrequently, andwhen they did, the range of forms they chose was limited, compared to all they hadlearned in their grammar class. In a post hoc analysis, we found that there was a weak,but insignificant, correlation between scores on the metalinguistic task and number ofform-related objectives integrated into content-based lessons. KAL, as the ability toidentify metalinguistic terminology in a passage, had very little to do with how manylinguistic objectives appeared in the lesson plans. Finally, while we are not claiming thatthere is an ideal number of linguistic aims in a unit, nor that syntax should always be theprimary language focus, it is of some concern that linguistic development is given solittle attention and that the range of forms targeted is so narrow.