Research On Focus On Form In College English Teaching

Many college English teachers lay emphasis on language meaning instead of language forms in order to satisfy the need of new college English curricular,change the present situation of "dumb-and-deaf English" and improve the students' communicative competence. This approach upgrades the fluency but slows down accuracy,which results in interlanguage fossilization.Focus on form in college English can improve both the fluency and accuracy of English language,which are crucial for the learners of English to improve the communicative competence.Focus on form has become a heatedly discussed issue in the study of second language acquisition and teaching abroad in recent years.It is not the traditional teaching way that focuses on grammatical and linguistic forms from the surface meaning,but a new way that integrates forms into communicative language classroom.Raised by Long(1991),focus on form is different from focus on forms and focus on meaning.Focus on forms emphasizes the mastering of the language forms while focus on meaning emphasizes the comprehensible output of meaning.Focus on form highlights the language forms in communicative classrooms and has been regarded as an effective means to balance the forms and meaning and facilitate the development of interlanguage in second language.This thesis objects to finding out the practicability of focus on form,the process of practicing focus on form and the effectiveness of the process.Brief introduction to the background and the research will be provided at the beginning of this thesis.Then we would review in detail the literatures in this field both abroad and at home,including the definitions of focus on form,its type,the process of applying focus on form and some empirical researches that have been previously done on focus on form in second language acquisition in the second chapter.The research subjects,data collection instruments,research methods,as well as the data analysis methods would be described in detail in chapter three.Based on the theories and the objectives established,the research covered two groups of non-English major students,which come from the same college.One group received focus on form instruction and the other received focus on meaning instruction.Chapter Four,the data presentation and discussions,is the most important part in this thesis.SPSS13.0,statistical analysis software,helps us prove that focus on form can improve the students' commtmicative competence.This research also finds that interaction plays a crucial part in the process of applying focus on form.It directly influences the students' speaking and listening.In the thesis,the theory of teaching and learning and the teaching principles of focus on form were discussed.The results obtained in the research can be employed in college English teaching to improve students' commurticative competence,which implies a lot in foreign language teaching.The main contributions of this research to the study of focus on form are:1) it provides an empirical research to the previous theoretical studies;2) it reveals the process of applying focus on form;3) it implies the practicability of the teaching approach.