GETTING IT RIGHT IN THE END

Draws on hypotheses from cognitive perspective

Comprehensive input hypothesis Interaction hypothesis Noticing hypothesis

Draws on sociocultural perspective Collaborative dialogue Internalizaton of language through socially

mediated activity

Meaning focused instruction is crucial

Meaningful comprehensible input and interaction will facilitate development in learners’ interlanguage

Language features will be acquired naturally, provided:- have adequate exposure- are at appropiate stage of development- are motivated to learn

Comprehension basedContent basedTask based

Form focused instruction (FFI) plays a role. ► Instruction does not always involve metalinguistic explanation ► Not everything has to be taught explicitly ► It has to be....... NOTICED

TEACHER’S ROLE Provide meaningful comprehensible input Provide clearly contextualized language

which allows learners to notice target form Provide opportunities for interaction Look for the right moment to create an

increased awareness

LEARNER’S ROLE Ls should be prepared to interact Ls not expected to give metalinguistic

explanations Ls not expected to get it right straight away Ls should try to notice how their language

differs from the more proficient others

FORM-FOCUSED EXPERIMENTS IN INTENSIVE ESL.

DESCRIPTIVE STUDIES BY P. LIGHTBOWN AND N. SPADA (1990,1994)

activities were focused on meaning, rather than form

opportunities for spontaneous interactionrich and varied comprehensible input

RESULTS good listening comprehensioncommunicative confidence in English

HOWEVER

Problems with linguistic accuracy & complexity still existed

EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES

Examination of the effects of FFI and CF with respect to adverb placement and question formation

1.White (1991) investigated adverb placement because of the differences between English and French

Explicit explanation for adverb placement differences in English and French was needed

2. Questions have been extensively investigated in the literature and data were available

Experimental and comparison groups were tested before and after the instruction

Students continued to participate in the regular communicative activities

Teachers were given pedagogical materials for form-focused instruction

The experimental groups received 8 hours of instruction on adverbs or questions over two weeks

RESULTS ON ADVERB PLACEMENT

Learners who received explicit instruction outperformed the learners who did not.

HOWEVER

A year later the gains made by the learners had disappeared

Their performance was like that of uninstructed learners

White (1991)

RESULTS ON QUESTION STUDY

Instructed group outperformed uninstructed group on the written tasks

Six weeks and six months after the instruction the level of knowledge was maintained

Improvement in oral performance sustained over time

WHY?

The difference in the availability of the target forms in the classroom:

• adverbs were extremely rare in classroom speech

• little opportunity to maintain the acquired knowledge

BY CONTRAST

Opportunities to hear and use questions in the classroom every day

Focused instruction enabled learners to advance in their knowledge and use of questions

INFLUENCE OF L1 ON L2 DEVELOPMENT

The influence of L1 in the acquisition of the possessive determiners ‘his’ and ‘her’ was observed

Will FFI with explicit contrastive information about L1 and L2 differences promote learners’ development of question form and possessive determiners?

FINDINGS

Learners who received instruction on possessive determiners improved in their knowledge than learners who received instruction on question forms.

WHY?

Differences between the form-meaning connections of these two features

A misused possessive determiner leads to a communication breakdown

For instance: She’s meeting with her classmate. Who she’s meeting with?

CONCLUSION: instruction may affect language features in different ways.

DIFFERENT FOCUS IN FRENCH IMMERSION AND CONTENT-BASED SCIENCE CLASSROOM

DIFFERENT FOCUS IN FRENCH IMMERSION AND CONTENT-BASED SCIENCE CLASSROOM

NO. Researcher Focus on Form

Age Period Example

34 Birgit Harley1998

GenderArticles

Noun Endings7-8 years

Five weeks20min a day

Une or unLa or le

-ette in la bicyclette-eau in le bateau

35 Roy Lyster1994

Use of second person

pronouns 13 years

12 hours over a five-week

period

Tus and voustu: indicate informality and

familiarityvous: be used as a marker of respectful politeness or social

distance

36 Catherine Doughty

&Elizabeth

Varela1998

Past tense&

conditional verb forms 11-14 years

Several weeks

  

STUDY 34 FOCUSING ON GENDER IN FRENCH IMMERSION

Grammatical gender, articles and noun endings

Game activities like I Spy

results

 

   

better at recognizing and producing accurate gender distinctions for

familiar nouns

did not enable learners to

generalize their learning to new

vocabulary

STUDY 35 FOCUSING ON SOCIOLINGUISTIC FORMS IN FRENCH IMMERSION

to test the distinction between the use of second person pronouns

explicit instruction and corrective feedback are given

perform significantly better on both written and oral production tasks and multiple-choice test

 

 

STUDY 36 FOCUSING ON VERB FORMS IN CONTENT-BASED SCIENCE CLASSROOMS Procedure: corrective feedback on past

tense and conditional verb forms to correct the errors in the oral or written work related to science reports

Results: students made more progress in using past and conditional forms even two months later

STUDIES ON THE ROLE OF TEACHERS IN FFI

RECAST AND PROMPTS Focus: Effects of FFI and feedback type on second language learning Partcipants: Grade 5 students in french immersion classroom Methods: Experimental

Results: Instruction with prompts is significantly better than instruction with recasts in helping students to learn writing. HOWEVER, In oral tasks, there’s no difference between them. (Assumed as a result of limitation of the study)

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4

Explicit Intruction, drawing Ls attention to grammatical gender+Recast

Explicit Intruction, drawing Ls attention to grammatical gender+Prompts

Explicit Intruction, drawing Ls attention to grammatical gender+No corrective feedback

No instruction.No corrective feedback.

COLLABORATIVE DIALOGUE Focus: Effects of collaborative talk on students in noticing their

mistakes Participants: Grade 7 french immersion students Methods:

Pre-test: Original story that two learners created together Post-test: The stories that each learner constructed Result: Collaborative talk gives opportunities for students to ask

questions, and thus, it leads to improvement in their writing skill

Collaborative Dialogue Noticing Activity

Students wrote a story collaboratively

The students compared what they had written with a reformulated version of the story

TASK-BASED INSTRUCTION Focus: Effects of task-based instruction with focus on form in improving the learners’

ability to use modal auxiliaries in expressions of possibility and probability Participants: Adult ESL learners Methods:

Results: There is an improvement. Students use more modal auxiliaries in their speech.

Work in groups to speculate on the identity of an unknown person (for example, age, gender, occupation) by looking at a set

of objects thought to have come from that person’s pocket

Students told each other what they had decided. The teacher played roles as co-communicator. She gradually shifted focus from

meaning to form. From implicit to explicitThe students prepared and presented a poster based on their

conclusions about the identity of the unknown person to the whole class.

Teacher focused on the content, not on the form

TIMING OF FFI Focus:

1) Should the attention to form be embedded during communicative activities (Integrated FFI)? Or separated (Isolated FFI)?2) Do both lead to different kinds of L2 knowledge?

Participants: Two class of intermediate adult ESL Learners

Results: In terms of oral communication, Integrated FFI is better than isolated FFI. In terms of written grammar test, isolated FFI is better than integrated FFI.

Class A Class B

Attention to form embedded in communicative activities

Attention to form separated from communicative activities

STUDIES ON THE ROLE OF TEACHERS IN FFITopic Research Questions Results

Recast and prompts Effects of FFI and feedback type on second language learning

Instruction with prompts is significantly better than instruction with recasts in helping students to learn writing.HOWEVER.In oral task, there’s no difference between them. (Assumed as a result of limitation of the study)

Collaborative Dialogue Effects of collaborative talk on students in noticing their mistakes

Collaborative talk gives opportunities for students to ask questions, and thus, it leads to improvement in their writing skill

Task-based instruction Effects of task-based instruction with focus on form in improving the learners’ ability of using expression of possibility and probability

There is an improvement. Students use more modal auxiliaries in their speech.

Timing of FFI Should the attention to form embedded during communicative activities (Integrated FFI)? Or separated (Isolated FFI)?

In terms of oral communication task, Integrated FFI is better than isolated FFI.In terms of written grammar test, isolated FFI is better than integrated FFI.