Empicirical Studies On Oral Accuracy Development Of EFL Learners

Meaning and form are indispensable in the development of language proficiency, but the instruction of them is often separated in foreign language class. Learners' oral proficiency develops rather slowly compared to other skills. Since classroom is the main sources for foreign language input and the usual channel for learner language output by means of instruction and interaction, classroom second language acquisition can discover what classroom conditions are most likely to facilitate acquisition. The present study is a kind of classroom-oriented research. It designs a quasi-experiment and series of tests to describe the development of learner language. The main purpose is to investigate the effect of focus-on-form instruction (FFI) in communicative tasks on oral accuracy development. FFI refers to a range of pedagogical interventions that seek to attract and direct learners' attention to specific formal aspects of the language code in the context of meaningful language use. In addition, it discusses the effect of task type on accuracy development.Outcomes of FFI treatments are compared with non-focus-on-form instruction (NFFI). Progress is measured with a pretest and a posttest yielding these major findings (1) FFI has positive effect on the development of accuracy. Learners receiving FFI make better progress either in the oral tests or in the grammar tests. (2) The effect of instruction is not even in the different grammatical features. FFI involving extensive instruction directed at "simple" structures is more likely to succeed. LI interference errors and development errors could be fossilized at some stage of learning while instructional treatments may lessen the likelihood of variability. (3) Results show task difficulty not only determines the degree of accuracy but also affects the extent of development in the long run. (4) Grammatical competence and oral performance have something related but there are gaps between their development. Learners have unconscious knowledge of functional projections and features while they sometimes have a problem with realization of surface morphology.It is concluded that the development of the participants' L2 oral accuracy is a demonstration of the development of their on-line processing ability and the transference between explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge of target language. FFI can provide space for learners to devote conscious attention to particular features in accomplishing communicative tasks, so it improves learners' processing ability on one hand. On the other hand, FFI can contribute to the acquisition of implicit knowledge from explicit knowledge.