Investigating The Impact Of Linguistic Complexity Upon The Efficacy Of The Focus On Form Approach

The present study investigates the impact of linguistic complexity upon the efficacy of focus on form (FonF) and the differential effects of FonF and focus on forms (FonFs) in EFL students' learning of English article system, conditional clause and past tense in the classroom settings in a Chinese junior middle school.FonF directly derived from the less-than-impressive results achieved by the non-interventionists versions of the communicative language teaching approach (CLT) in 1980s (Ron Sheen, 2003). which refused to give a systematic role to grammar instruction. What FonF concern is to 'overtly' draw learners' attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communications". The previous studies on FonF investigated a number of different noticing enhancement techniques in learning different linguistic forms and produced quite mixed results. Based on the discussion of the mixed results of the previous empirical studies on FonF and also on Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis (1990, 2001), Robinson's proposal of 'detection plus rehearsal' (1995, 2003), VanPatten's input processing instruction theory (1996, 2002), three research questions were raised to investigate: 1) whether FonF is effective in facilitating EFL learners' learning of the three linguistic forms; 2) whether FonF produces better results than FonFs, and 3) whether linguistic complexity exerts significant impact upon EFL learners' learning of a linguistic form.The complexity of the three linguistic forms under investigation was reassessed within a processing framework (VanPatten, 1996, 2001), which incorporates processibility hierarchy (PH), communicative value (CV), meaning transparency (MT), and reranked, from difficult to simple, as the following: articles > conditional > past tense formation.The experiment was a factorial design with pretest-posttests and two groups: EG (n=30) and (n=30). The two independent variables were the linguistic complexity of the three target forms and the enhancement techniques- FonF vs. FonFs. The dependent variable was EFL learners' learning of the three linguistic forms, i.e., the scores in the three tests.The findings are: 1) In facilitating the learners' learning of the three linguistic forms, FonF is more effective than FonFs in learning conditional if, almost equally effective with FonFs in learning the past tense, but less effective than FonFs in the article system learning. 2) FonF is more effective than FonFs in facilitating the learners' learning of English conditional if, but less effective than FonFs in learning article. As to the learning of the past tense, FonF and FonFs are equally effective. 3) Linguistic complexity exerts significant impact upon the efficacy of both FonF and FonFs in the learning of all the three linguistic forms in terms of both short-term and long-term effects.The thesis consists of 5 chapters: Chapter 1 is an introduction of the research topic, purpose and significance; Chapter 2 is a selective literature review of the enhancement techniques and mixed results of FonF in the previous studies, Chapter 3 presents the theoretical framework the present study was based on; Chapter 4 reports on the present study, including the hypotheses, operational definitions, subjects, target language forms, research design, procedures, instrument, data collection and analysis, analysis, discussion; and Chapter 5 is the conclusions of the present study.