Form-focused instruction in the french L2 classroom

Instrucció basada en l’atenció a la forma a la classe de francès L2. Aquest article estudia la integració de la gramàtica en el mètode comunicatiu a la classe de llengua. Considera l’adquisició de l’alternança masculí/femení dels adjectius regulars francesos i argumenta que caldria ensenyar aquest tret gramatical subratllant la regularitat de la concordança de l’adjectiu en francès. Es fa una revisió de dotze llibres de text de primer curs de francès utilitzats als Estats Units, anotant que, amb només dues excepcions, gairebé tots posen èmfasi en una atenció basada en les formes (paradigmes individuals) enlloc de en la forma (el sistema subjacent a la gramàtica). Es conclou amb algunes suggerències sobre com els llibres de text podrien adreçar de forma més efectiva la dicotomia masculí/femení de l’adjectiu francès

Form-focused instruction to identify category of clauses: the case of Lebanese university students of ESL

Un área de gramática que desafía a los estudiantes universitarios de primer año de inglés como segundo idioma ESL en la Universidad Libanesa es las oraciones. En una clase de instrucción centrada en la forma, los estudiantes de ESL suelen hacer bien en la construcción de oraciones adjetivas, y de alguna manera en las oraciones de adverbio, así, sin embargo, se enfrentan a dificultades en la construcción de oraciones nominales. Otro desafío mayor aparece cuando se pide a los estudiantes que identifiquen el tipo de la oración, especialmente cuando se usa el mismo pronombre relativo, como “cuándo” o “dónde”, para construir los tres tipos de oraciones: adjetivo, adverbio y sustantivo. Siguiendo el enfoque cuasi-experimental cuantitativo, a través de un pre y un post-test, el presente estudio investigó estos desafíos con ilustraciones del trabajo de los estudiantes, que hace el corpus de este estudio, y proporciona un análisis lingüístico cognitivo y análisis meta-cognitivo, para resolver este problema. Prosigue con la exploración de técnicas de enseñanza basadas en las características lingüísticas idiosincrásicas de cada tipo, en un intento de capacitar a los estudiantes para diferenciar entre los tres tipos.One area of grammar that challenges first year university learners of English as a second language ESL at the Lebanese university is clauses. In a form-focused- instruction class, ESL learners usually do well on constructing adjective clauses and somehow on adverb clauses as well, yet they face difficulty in constructing noun clauses. Another greater challenge appears when learners are asked to identify the type of the clause especially when the same relative pronoun, such as “where” or “when”, is used in constructing the three types of clauses, namely adjective, adverb and noun. Following the quasi-experimental quantitative approach, via a pre- and a post-test, the present study investigated these challenges with illustrations of students’ work, which makes the corpus of this study, and provides a linguistics analysis, cognitive and meta-cognitive analysis, to solve this problem. It proceeds with exploring teaching techniques based on the idiosyncratic linguistic feature of each type in an attempt to enable learners to differentiate between the three types of clauses

The effect of form-focused instruction on Japanese college students

There has been a long-standing controversy about whether teaching grammar helps to achieve an important goal of language learning, that is, to become able to use the language communicatively

Form-Focused Instruction on Non-English-Majored Undergraduates’ Foreign Language Writing

This paper reviewed a one-term experiment on form-focused instruction (FFI) in teaching foreign (English) writing to 162 first-year non-English-majored undergraduate students majored history, economics, computer, agriculture, plant protection, floriculture and veterinary from Yangtze University as participants. Participants in this study consisted of 81 non-English-majored undergraduate students in the control group (CG) and 81 non-English-majored undergraduate students in the treatment group (TG). The participants in CG were taught by the traditional method: grammar-translation teaching method and the participants in TG were taught by the new teaching method of FFI. The results showed that 1) compared with a teacher-dominated approach for CG, FFI in teaching English writing for TG did a better job inenhancing students’ English writing ability; 2) there were significant differences between males in CG and TG, and females in CG and TG; 3) participates in TG hold positive opinions towards FFI in English writing

Timing of form-focused instruction: Effects on EFL learners’ grammar learning

This study investigates how different form-focused instruction (FFI) timing impacts English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ grammar development. A total of 169 Chinese middle school learners were assigned to four conditions randomly: control, before-isolated FFI, integrated FFI, and after-isolated FFI. The three experimental groups received treatments which combined form and meaning with the English passive voice as the teaching target, but learners’ attention was drawn to the passive voice with different timing. The before-isolated and after-isolated groups received the treatment before and after communicative activities, respectively. For the integrated FFI group, intervention occurred during communicative activities. A picture writing test and a written error correction test were employed to measure students’ performance. The results indicated that the three experimental groups manifested significant improvement. Before-isolated FFI produced the best immediate and delayed effects, and integrated FFI produced better immediate effect than after-isolated FFI, while after-isolated FFI produced better delayed effect than integrated FFI. The findings indicated that pedagogical sequences in FFI are important, and teachers might need to guide adolescent learners to focus on form explicitly before communicative activities.This study investigates how different form-focused instruction (FFI) timing impacts English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ grammar development. A total of 169 Chinese middle school learners were assigned to four conditions randomly: control, before-isolated FFI, integrated FFI, and after-isolated FFI. The three experimental groups received treatments which combined form and meaning with the English passive voice as the teaching target, but learners’ attention was drawn to the passive voice with different timing. The before-isolated and after-isolated groups received the treatment before and after communicative activities, respectively. For the integrated FFI group, intervention occurred during communicative activities. A picture writing test and a written error correction test were employed to measure students’ performance. The results indicated that the three experimental groups manifested significant improvement. Before-isolated FFI produced the best immediate and delayed effects, and integrated FFI produced better immediate effect than after-isolated FFI, while after-isolated FFI produced better delayed effect than integrated FFI. The findings indicated that pedagogical sequences in FFI are important, and teachers might need to guide adolescent learners to focus on form explicitly before communicative activities

First language interference and form focused instruction

This paper addresses EFL/ESL teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding the use of the first language in a language classroom pertaining to the Form-Focused Instruction - a grammar instruction approach. In essence, this study looks into whether the judicious use of L1 in learning the foreign or second language is effective or not. A case study strategy was deemed appropriate for this study to explore and investigate the beliefs and practices of the non-native teachers on the use of L1 in learning English as a foreign language. To this end, six English language teachers were selected from a Chinese secondary school. The data were collected through classroom observations and stimulated recall interview questions. The audio-recorded data were fully transcribed in English, and subjected to a process of interpretative analysis. The findings revealed that teachers used L1 mainly to present the target grammar topics, to explain the grammatical rules and also to encourage students for the explanation of the grammatical rules in there L1. It is therefore imperative to consider the results of this study as it may highlight some notable pedagogical implications regarding the assisted effects of the use of first language on foreign/second language learning

DOES FORM-FOCUSED INSTRUCTION AFFECT L2 LEARNERS PERFORMANCE? FOCUS ON GRAMMATICALLY JUDGMENTS

It is one of the goals of research in applied linguistics to gain insight into the process and mechanisms of second language acquisition.  The cornerstone and the single most fundamental change in perspective on the nature of language and language learning is, perhaps, the focus on learners as active creators in their learning process, not as passive recipients.  The present study has two goals.  First, it aims at investigating advanced students’ metalinguistic ability in solving multidimensional grammatical problems.  Second, it is, also, an attempt to highlight the role of focus on form instructions in shaping L2 learners’ performance. The subjects of the present study were forty Egyptian students who were in their fourth year of academic study in the Department of English and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Menufia University, Egypt.  The instrument of this study consisted of (1) pre-test; (2) post-test; and (3) individual interviews.  Two tasks were used: (1) “Sentence Completion” task, and (2) “Error Recognition and Correction” task.  In the first task, a list of 15 incomplete sentences was given to the subjects who were asked to choose the word or phrase to complete the sentence.  The focus, in this task, was on the meaning of the sentence rather than the form, although accurate understanding of the formal properties of language is a must.  In the second task, students were asked to detect the word or phrase that must be changed in order for the sentence to be correct.  A list of 25 sentences was given to the subjects who worked on this task twice.  In the pre-test, no word or phrase was underlined; it is an example of the unfocused correction type.  In the post-test, the same sentences were given to the subjects, with four words underlined, and marked (A), (B), (C) and (D).  It is an example of the focused correction type. Finally, students were interviewed to explain and comment on their performance in the previous tasks.  The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results were obtained and conclusions were made.It is one of the goals of research in applied linguistics to gain insight into the process and mechanisms of second language acquisition.  A correct understanding of these processes and mechanisms is a prerequisite for an adequate didactic approach.  Relatedly, Morley (1987) points out that during the last twenty years ideas about language learning and language teaching have been changing in some very fundamental ways.  Significant developments in perspectives on the nature of second language learning processes have had a marked effect on language pedagogyThe cornerstone and the single most fundamental change in perspectives on the nature of language and language learning in recent years is, perhaps, the focus on learners as active creators in their learning process, not as passive recipients.  Accordingly, the focus of second language study has shifted from a prominence of contrastive analysis in the 1940s and 1950s and error analysis in the 60s and 70s to interlanguage analysis in the 70s and 80s.  Interlanguage analysis is marked today by “a variety of investigations looking at diverse aspects of learner language” (Morley, 1987: 16).  In this connection, Gass (1983: 273) points out that “it is widely accepted that the language of second language learners, what Selinker (1972 has called ‘interlanguage’ or what (Gass, 1983) has called ‘Learner-language’ is a system in its own right.”  To understand such a system, we should focus on discovering how second language (L2) learners evaluate and correct their own or other people’s utterances, an issue that will be explored in the present study.  In other words, the major point of interest here is L2 learners’ linguistic intuitions and the role of focus on form instruction in making grammaticality judgments

Form-focused instruction: A case study of Vietnamese teachers’ beliefs and practices

Despite the reported powerful influence of teachers’ beliefs on their pedagogical practices in the classroom, very few in-depth case studies of foreign language teachers’ beliefs and the correspondence between their beliefs and instructional strategies have been internationally published – Woods (1996) being an important exception. Moreover, not a single in-depth study has ever been conducted in the context of Vietnamese state secondary schools, where teachers are non-native speakers, resources are minimal, and access to published scholarship and research is very limited. The present qualitative case study seeks to occupy this research space because contextual factors such as limited access to expert knowledge, teachers’ isolation, a prescribed curriculum, time constraints, and high-stake examinations need to be part of any analysis of teachers’ beliefs and the correlation between beliefs and practices. It has explored the beliefs about form-focused instruction held by a group of eight teachers with teaching experience ranging from 24 to 2 years and the relationship between their beliefs and practices as well as factors shaping their beliefs. Eighteen interviews (ranging from 30 to 60 minutes long) and observations of 24 naturally occurring form-focused lessons in 12 groups of 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, i.e., all grades of the upper secondary school level, and 18 hours of stimulated recall interviews were conducted to collect the data. The audio- and video-recorded data were fully transcribed and translated from Vietnamese into English, and were subjected to a process of interpretative analysis through a constant comparison and contrast of the various data. As it is revealed in the study that teachers showed a strong inclination to adopt a deductive approach to grammar with pupils memorising of grammatical rules and terminology, and doing the controlled grammar exercises in the textbook as the best way of learning grammar. Neither their beliefs nor practices were related to either current theories of language learning within the mainstream Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research or to the methodology promoted in the prescribed curriculum. Findings of the study also indiate that while teachers’ beliefs were affected by multiple contetxual factors, experiences which were accumulated through the process of socialisation in their professional community played the most influential role. Such beliefs constituted their personal theories for practice, which shaped what they did in the classroom and how they did it. Thus, these teachers shared a ‘collectively normative pedagogy’, which was underpinned by their common beliefs and justified by their common pattern of beliefs and practices. Although this is a case study and as such it is not valid to make generalisations, it has some significant contributions to add to an understanding of teachers’ beliefs in terms of research methodology and theoretical understanding with reference to teacher cognition and teacher professional development in the specific educational context where the teaching of English is undertaken by non-native-English-speaking teachers. These are discussed in the concluding chapter, Chapter VII

Second Language Acquisition and Form-Focused Instruction in Immersion: Teaching for Learning

While research on language immersion education has highlighted a multitude of benefits such as cognitive skills, academic achievement and language and literacy development, some studies have also identified challenges to its effective implementation, particularly as they relate to language acquisition. It has been suggested that the less than optimal levels of students’ immersion language “persist in part because immersion teachers lack systematic approaches for integrating language into their content instruction” (Tedick, Christian, & Fortune, 2011, p. 7). Students’ interlanguage has aspects that are borrowed, transferred and generalised from the mother tongue and differs from both the immersion language and the mother tongue. After a period of sustained development, interlanguage appears to stabilise and certain non-target like features tend to fossilise. Research has long suggested that effective immersion pedagogy needs to counterbalance both form-oriented and meaning-oriented approaches. This paper reviews the literature in relation to the linguistic deficiencies in immersion students’ L2 proficiency and form-focused instruction is examined as a viable solution to this pedagogic puzzle. Key instructional elements of form-focused instruction are unpacked and some pedagogical possibilities are considered in an attempt to identify and discuss strategies that will enable immersion learners to refine their grammatical and lexical systems as they proceed

The Integration of Form-focused Instruction within Communicative Language Teaching: Instructional Options

The strong versions of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) undermine the role of formal instruction in language learning and may even consider it detrimental. According to proponents of the strong CLT versions, learners pick up the language from interactions that focus on the semantic aspect of the language rather than its formal characteristics. Hence, teaching language forms is not recommended. This position has, however, faced harsh criticism over the last three decades. Compelling evidence (e.g., Millard, 2000) has showed that the sole focus on meaning may produce fluent learners who lack language accuracy. This evidence, supported by other significant hypotheses (e.g., Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis) and models (e.g., VanPatten’s Processing Model) called for the re-introduction of formal instruction, but within a CLT framework. The present paper supports this relatively recent direction. The paper provides an overview of the developments that have led to the re-introduction of formal instruction in second language (L2) learning. The paper also surveys different lines of support for the integration of the approach known as Form-Focused Instruction within Communicative Language Teaching. Finally, the paper surveys various useful pedagogical techniques to support the successful FFI-CLT marriage in the English language classroom. The techniques are categorized under Ellis’s (1998) classification of instructional intervention