As Sheen (2002) points out, one of the current debates in applied linguistics focuses on the most effective form of grammar instruction in the communicative classroom (Lightbown 2000; Norris and Ortega 2000). The debate revolves around the degree to which teachers need to direct learners' attention to understanding grammar whilst retaining a focus on the need to communicate.

This piece of research focuses on two different language and teaching contexts: England and Turkey. These two contexts are analysed since both Modern Foreign Language (MFL) syllabuses in England and Turkey assign different emphases on grammar teaching and form-focused instruction. The MFL syllabuses in the Turkish National Curriculum appear to put relatively more emphasis on developing students' awareness of language. Throughout the syllabuses language teachers in Turkey are encouraged to teach grammar explicitly to develop student understanding of language structures of the target language. The teachers in English context, on the other hand, are encouraged to introduce the linguistic items in ready-made chunks, without labelling them. Therefore, the hypothesis put forward for this study is that the grammar teaching and form-focused instruction in the two countries will be different and this difference will impact on classroom interaction. 

British language education in the 80s was substantially influenced by the emergence and promotion of the 'communicative approach'. Educators and applied linguists all shared a commitment to 'language in use', and to a view of 'communicative competence' as the ultimate objective of language teaching (Mitchell, 2000). The MFL programme in Turkey also based its teaching objectives on the general goal of developing communicative abilities as well as on developing student awareness of the target language.

Overall, both English and Turkish MFL syllabuses put emphasis on functional aspect of language and developing communication skills of students. According to English and Turkish MFL syllabuses, students should be exposed to the target language as much as possible and they should be able use the language for real purposes. However, it is not clear to what extent these objectives are implemented in actual classroom practisesincelearners' communicative competence have generally been regarded as 'poor'. As Dogancay-Aktuna (1998) states, it seems that students' competence in secondary schools in Turkey does not develop beyond the basics in most cases. There is a growing perception among the MFL professional community in England that learning outcomes are not satisfactory because a disappointing portion of pupils are making the transition to creative control of the target language system despite the focus on communication.

As many researchers suggest a considerable progress has been made on the psycholinguistic front of classroom research through mainly experimental design and also case studies. However, there is a dearth of empirical classroom-based data to establish what teachers are actually doing in the classroom and how they are implementing the objectives of language teaching and learning in the classroom context. It is particularly important for this study to establish the type of real classroom-based data which might provide directly relevant information for language teachers in the two different contexts.

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