Focus-on-Form And Focus-on-Forms Instructions On Vocabulary Learning

Since it was proposed in the early 1990s, focus-on-form has become a major concern of many linguists and language teachers, and the results of relevant researches have shown that focus-on-form instruction is more effective than focus-on-forms instruction in many respects (Doughty and Verela, 1998; Izumi, 2002; Alison Mackey, 2006). But different results have been obtained in the research on vocabulary teaching, such as the studies by Maria J. de la Fuente (2006) and those by Laufer (2003). Therefore, further study is worth conducting.Based on the theories of focus-on-form and focus-on-forms, the present study made a comparison of the effectiveness of focus-on-form instruction and focus-on-forms instruction on vocabulary acquisition in the reading context,trying to find out a comparatively efficient and effective teaching method with which students could learn the target words more effectively in reading classes and meanwhile their reading comprehension will not be affected.Subjects in this study are non-English majors from two freshmen classes in Jiangnan University. Class 1 was taught with focus-on-form instruction while Class 2 was taught with focus-on-forms instruction. After the class instruction, all subjects received both an immediate test (immediately after the class) which consisted of a reading comprehension test and a vocabulary test, and a delayed vocabulary test (two weeks after the first test).The results of the independent samples t-tests analysis show that focus-on-forms instruction is more effective than focus-on-form instruction in both students'short-term memory and long-term memory of the target words. It is also discovered through analysis of relevant data that there is no significant difference in the degree of reading comprehension between the two classes. This result further confirms Laufer's research findings. Unlike Laufer's studies, in which vocabulary was taught discretely from its context, in this experiment, vocabulary learning is part of the instruction and delivered in the reading context.Besides, the Interaction Hypothesis, the Noticing Hypothesis and other relevant linguistic theories are employed to discuss the results of the research. And on the basis of the discussion, the following implication is obtained: based on the diversity of word formation and the findings of this study, vocabulary teaching should better be conducted with focus-on-forms instruction in English reading class.