Promoting Noticing And Sla Through Focus-On-Form Instruction

This dissertation attempts to explore the role of focus-on-form instruction in promoting learners'noticing of the formal properties of certain linguistic forms, and in facilitating the subsequent learning of the target forms. It mainly addresses four research questions:1. Does focus-on-form instruction promote learners'noticing of the specific linguistic form?2. Does focus-on-form instruction facilitate acquisition of the linguistic form?3. Does the level of noticing correlate with the level of achievement?4. What are the factors that may affect the process of noticing and hence the effectiveness of focus-on-form instruction?It has been generally agreed upon in SLA research that directing learners'attention to linguistic features in classroom second language learning is conducive to the acquisition of them. However, researchers are not unanimous on the effective ways of directing learners'attention to the formal properties of linguistic forms. In the history of second language teaching, this subject of controversy was embodied in the permutation of various teaching methodologies, which is touched upon in Chapter One. This constitutes the background information for the present study. Based on the proposal, put forward by Long (1991), that focus on form rather than focus on forms integrates learners'attention to form and meaning simultaneously, various focus-on-form techniques have been empirically explored to determine their effect, which is reviewed in Chapter One. In particular, it is pointed out that, different from other options in language teaching, focus on form involves learners'brief and perhaps simultaneous attending to form, meaning and use during one cognitive event. This is claimed to facilitate the cognitive mapping among linguistic form, meaning and the function of it, which is considered fundamental to successful language learning. In the operationalization of focus on form, special emphasis has been put on the key construct—selective attention, or the allocation of learners'focal attention, which provides focus-on-form instruction with a cognitively explanatory potential.