The Effects Of The Isolated And Integrated Form-Focused Instruction On English Passive Voice Acquisition Of Junior Middle School Students

Grammar teaching has always been the focus of controversy in English teaching and research in China.For example,in the process of teaching grammar,should we pay attention to grammatical knowledge or communicative competence? For this phenomenon,some researchers have been exploring more appropriate grammar teaching methods.Spada & Lightbown proposed two concepts with broad meanings the isolated form-focused instruction and the integrated form-focused instruction in 2008.Their purpose is to enable students to master grammar knowledge and improve their grammar application ability.Compared with a large number of foreign studies on these two grammar teaching methods,there are few results in China.Under the guidance of transfer appropriate processing and noticing hypothesis,this study explores the research of different timings of form-focused instruction on English passive voice teaching in junior high school and attempts to explore the following issues:(1)Which form-focused instruction is more effective to improve students' English grammar achievements to learn English passive voice,the isolated form-focused instruction or the integrated form-focused instruction?(2)Do different levels of junior high school students have an impact upon the effectiveness of the isolated form-focused instruction and the integrated form-focused instruction?In this experimental study,116 students from two nature classes in grade two participated.They were randomly assigned to the experimental class one which received the isolated form-focused instruction and the experimental class two which received integrated form-focused instruction.Both of these grammatical teaching methods are preemptive in nature,namely,planning and teacher generation.Integrated form-focused instruction is to embed form-focused instruction into communicative practice,while in isolated form-focused instruction,it is separated from communicative practice.After eight weeks of teaching experiments,the author conducted a post-test on two classes.The 30 multiple-choice items based on single sentences were used to test the students' mastery of English passive voice and the difference between the two teaching methods.Through the analysis of the data by the independent sample t-test and the paired sample t-test in SPSS21.0,the research results showed that:(1)Both the isolated form-focused instruction and the integrated form-focused instruction help learners master English passive voice,but in general,the isolated form-focused instruction is more effective.(2)Different levels of junior high school students have an impact upon the effectiveness of the isolated form-focused instruction and the integrated form-focusedinstruction.For advanced students,the effect of the integrated form-focused instruction is better.For lower-level students,the effect of the isolated form-focused instruction is better.In the end,this paper discusses the main findings of the research and the implications of the integrated form-focused instruction and isolated form-focused instruction can both effectively improve the grammar scores of junior high school students.In carrying out grammar teaching,teachers should combine the two timings of form-focused instruction according to students' different levels and different teaching objectives,so as to improve students' grammar level.At the same time,this study also has some limitations.There is no control group in this study.And the experimental period is relatively short,which may lead to one-sided experimental results.Future research can improve on these aspects.