| The present study investigates the effects of focus-on-form tasks that attempt to direct learners' attention to a certain form in meaningful contexts from a cognitive perspective. The target of instruction is one of the four conditionals in Japanese, "to" which is subject to two semantic restrictions: time sequence restriction and modality restriction. University students in the U.S. participated in the experiment. In order to maintain learners' attention to a form in task-based instruction, explicit instruction was provided to increase the likelihood of learners' noticing a certain form, and input processing tasks which enable learners to take in as much input as possible to use for acquisition, preceded output processing tasks. During output processing tasks, learners were pushed to produce a target form by being asked for clarification. This group (Output Group) was compared with three groups: one group engaged in explicit instruction and input processing tasks only (Input Group); another group engaged in audiolingual lessons (Drill Group); and the other received no instruction (Control Group). Scores of a pretest and two posttest, each of which consists of grammaticality judgment, listening comprehension, oral production and written production were analyzed.; The major findings are that focus-on-form tasks had short-term as well as long-term effects, compared to audiolingual lessons that are "focus on forms." However, no difference was found between the Input Group and the Output Group. Post-hoc analysis shows that instructional procedures in the Output Group was not substantially different from the Input Group. Comparing the two output activities, the Drill Group shows an immediate effect in terms of grammaticality judgment and oral production although the attained level was lower than the Output Group; yet this immediate improvement disappeared two months later. In contrast, the Drill Group maintained gain scores in written production. This suggests that integration of form and meaning is important for internalization of grammatical knowledge and its automatization. The present study presents empirical evidence for task-based language teaching (TBLT) that is one way to realize "focus on form."... |
