STEP 2: Attention
What is it?
Now that your students have listened to the story in the Presentation phase, it is time to bring their attention to the grammar. Up to this point, the primary focus of the lesson has been the meaning of the story and not the grammar. Essentially, during the Attention phase, the teacher highlights some of the regularities and patterns of the grammar that was presented in the story.
Typically, this can be done by asking the students probing questions about the patterns they may have noticed while listening to the story. If teaching past or future tenses, you can start with a question such as: "When did all of the actions in the story take place?" to be sure they understand that the grammar is either a past or future tense. You can also ask a question such as "Did you notice any patterns in the way the verbs sounded?" During this time, it is a good idea to show the students a few written sample sentence from the story either on a projector or on the chalkboard. Ask the students if they see any patterns in the example sentences. This way, they can notice the pattern even if it did not occur to them during the listening phase.
During this step, it is important to give the students clues about the patterns involved. For the most part, let the students notice the pattern. Have them work in pairs or small groups to discuss any patterns they noticed about the grammar point while listening to the story or while looking at the sample sentences. Tell them that this is a "discovery" task, and they are responsible for investigating the pattern to figure out how the language works. But help them as you go. Depending on the difficulty of the grammar point at hand, the students may require more or less guided assistance from you. Sometimes, if the grammar point is salient* (i.e. obvious) enough, this step will be quite easy and will not last more than a minute or two. However, if the grammar is more complex, it may require more probing questions to bring the students' attention to the patterns involved in the grammar point. It is your job to assist your students through this step of the model and to decide how much assistance they require before they are prepared to move to the next step.
How it Contributes to Learning
This step helps the students to see patterns involved in language and to make generalizations about the "rules" associated with grammar. However, it also makes them active participants in the discovery of the language, since you are not just giving them grammar rules and fill-in-the-blank activities to practice. Additionally, the students will already have focused on the meaning of the grammar point, so they will be better prepared to use the grammar in the future. This step also allows the students to be curious about how the language works, which makes learning grammar more participatory and engaging.
Once everyone's attention has been focused on the pattern of the grammar point, it is now time to move on to the next step of the model-- Step Three: CO-CONSTRUCTION.