Focus on Forms and Focus on Form in Grammar Instruction

Recently, debates on grammar instruction has been revolving around whether to focus on form, forms, or meaning. Focus on form and focus on forms have been defined and differentiated by many SLA researchers. A body of research has been conducted to investigate and compare the effectiveness of the three methodological options. The choice among the three will directly determine methodological options of language instructors. This paper is aimed at providing an annotated bibliography of recent papers on the research into focus on form and focus on from. It is hoped that this paper will be of some value to language researchers in this field and English teachers alike.

Summary of Rod Ellis's Two Research Topics——Preemptive Focus on Form and Grammatical Difficulties in Second Language Learning

This paper aims to introduce two research articles of the well-known linguist in the field of second language acquisition, Rod Ellis, namely, Preemptive Focus on Form in the ESL Classroom written in 2001 and Investigating grammatical difficulty in second language learning: Implications for second language acquisition research and language testing written in 2008.

The Effect of Language Proficiency on Focus on Form in Doing Dictogloss Task

Focus on form has received much attention since 1991 when Long first proposed it. However, it has been little researched in China. The present study reveals how both upper-intermediate and lower-intermediate learners focus on form in the process of doing dictogloss. The study was intended to find whether dictogloss is an effective focus on form task for Chinese EFL students and whether proficiency is related to the extent to which these learners pay attention to form. The results were compared and interpreted in relation to those of other major studies concerning this particular area. It was found that dictogloss was an effective task for Chinese EFL students and there did exist differences between proficiency groups, and these differences seemed to be more complicated among Chinese EFL students.

Camouflaged Uptake Following Incidental Focus-on-Form Episodes

The efficacy of focus-on-form(FonF)within the context of communicatively-oriented language activities is measured via uptake.Uptake is defined as learners’verbal responses immediately following either preemptive or reactive FonF instruction(Loewen,2004).The present study investigated what is(not)meant and(not)measured through this definition of uptake.Drawing on the audio-recorded analysis of 20 hours of communicatively–oriented interactions in an intermediate IELTS class with two teachers,this study investigates the frequency of preemptive and reactive incidental FonF,and the subsequent occurrence of uptake in an English as a foreign language context.This study also provided an in-depth qualitative analysis of these classes through field notes,learner notes,and video-recorded data to explore the instances of uptake moves that were not captured through audio-recorded data.The quantitative findings of this study demonstrated a very low and disappointing uptake rate.Furthermore,the study did not find a significant difference between reactive and preemptive FonF in terms of uptake rate.Nonetheless,the qualitative data revealed a myriad of uptake instances not observable via the initial data analysis.Based on these findings,a new definition of uptake is suggested,which includes camouflaged uptake and learners’immediate oral responses to FonF.Since uptake is used to gauge the efficacy of incidental FonF in primarily meaning–oriented classes,it is concluded that audio-recorded data just show the tip of the iceberg as far as the uptake rate is concerned.Thus,second language acquisition researchers are recommended to employ multiple indices to examine the effectiveness of FonF instruction.

Second Language Learners＇ Intuitions of Grammaticality

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 study aims at investigating some second language learners＇ meta-linguistic ability in solving multidimensional grammatical problems. The subjects of the present study were 40 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 pre-test, post-test and individual interviews. Two tasks were used： （1） ＂Sentence Completion＂ task; and （2） ＂Error Recognition and Correction＂ task. 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.