JW03
It depends an awful lot on what's actually happened before. If the teacher has introduced a particular grammar point, or maybe ways of expressing a particular notion or function, and then they're given a chance to do a task, some students may see that as purely a chance to display the language that they've just been taught and to try to use examples of that, and they won't really be meaning what they say, they'll be thinking, 'Ah, OK, I need to use this form'. And other students might think, 'Oh, OK, we've got to do this task, so I've got to tell my friend what I might be doing at the weekend', and they might forget everything that they've just been taught, and might just do it with whatever language they have because they'll be focusing on meaning. [Corony: So then that task would have no relation to the rest of the lesson?] It may not have any relation to the rest of the lesson. And I've actually watched lessons where teachers have said, 'So I taught them the language and when they did the task, they didn't use any of it!' and looked really surprised. And to them, that was a failed lesson. But in fact that just shows how, if they're focusing on meaning, they're using whatever language is already, how shall I say, part of their interlanguage system, and it takes them much longer to learn a new structure than just one minute or two minutes. So if they're really thinking about meaning, and the language that's been taught to them is actually new to them, it's very unlikely they will use it.