Proactive Focus On Form And Subjunctive Mood Acquisition

Traditional form-based teaching focuses on the instruction of context-free grammatical knowledge and thus overlooks meaning while the communicative language teaching emerging in 1970 s has gone to the opposite extreme, that is, emphasizing meaning, communication and context but somewhat overlooking language form, especially grammar. In order to integrate the advantages and avoid the defects of these two different teaching approaches, some experts and scholars have proposed Focus on Form(Fon F) teaching approach. Fon F is generally classified into Explicit Fon F and Implicit Fon F. At present, relevant research on comparing the teaching effects of Explicit Fon F and Implicit Fon F yield inconsistent results, and there are few empirical studies on grammar acquisition from the perspective of Fon F. The EFL teaching in China colleges and universities generally falls into the category of Proactive Fon F, for the specific syllabus and textbooks are prescribed and the target grammar items taught in the classroom are predetermined. Therefore, the present empirical study, based on Proactive Fon F, with Noticing Hypothesis as its theoretical framework and subjunctive mood as its target grammar item, is aimed at testifying and comparing the short-term acquisition effects and long-term acquisition effects of Explicit Proactive Fon F and Implicit Proactive Fon F in teaching complicated grammar items, and answering the following two research questions:(1) In terms of short-term effects, which method has better effects in subjunctive mood learning, Explicit Proactive Fon F or Implicit Proactive Fon F?(2) In terms of long-term effects, which method has better effects in subjunctive mood learning, Explicit Proactive Fon F or Implicit Proactive Fon F?This empirical study consists of experimental teaching, immediate test and delayed test. The participants are two sophomore classes from Shandong Radio and TV University; there are 38 students in the experimental group(EG) and 40 students in the control group(CG) without significant differences in age and sex proportion. The pre-test is conducted one week before the experimental teaching begins in order to make sure that both groups are at the same level of target grammar item. The experimental teaching lasts for three weeks with the experimental group taught by Explicit Proactive Fon F by means of dictogloss activities, target grammar explanation and corrective feedback etc. The control group was taught by Implicit Proactive Fon F by means of enhanced input, recast etc. The immediate test is conducted immediately after the experimental teaching is finished, and the delayed test comes four weeks after the immediate test. Though the specific questions in the pre-test, immediate test and delayed test are totally different, the target grammar item and question types remain the same with similar test difficulty and complexity. The results show that the scores of the experimental group in the immediate test are significantly higher than those of the control group while the scores of the two groups in the delayed test have no significant difference. Besides, the scores of the two groups in the delayed post-test decrease significantly compared with the average scores in the immediate test while the experimental group suffers a larger score drop than the control group. The main reason for such results is that Explicit Proactive Fon F proves more effective in attracting the participants’ attention and noticing to the target grammar item and accordingly has achieved more ideal short-term acquisition effects, and what is more, the long-term acquisition effects of such complex grammar item as subjunctive mood rely on sufficient input and enhancement which can be provided by Implicit Proactive Fon F, so the long-term acquisition effects of Implicit Proactive Fon F are superior to those of Explicit Proactive Fon F. The overall conclusion drawn from the present empirical study is that the short-term effects of Explicit Proactive Fon F in acquiring subjunctive mood are better than those of Implicit Proactive Fon F while the long-term effects of Implicit Proactive Fon F in acquiring subjunctive mood are better than those of Explicit Proactive Fon F.The most fundamental pedagogical implication revealed by the present study is that Explicit Proactive Fon F and Implicit Proactive Fon F should be combined in grammar teaching or even EFL teaching in China so as to offer explicit teaching and acquisition guidance, stimulate learners’ attention and noticing to the target grammar item, enhance comprehensible input concerning the target grammar item with the purpose of achieving the most balanced and best short-term acquisition effects and long-term acquisition effects.Because of various limited conditions, the present empirical study has such limitations as a smaller sample, a shorter period of experimental teaching, and a shorter time interval between the delayed test and the immediate test. It is expected that the future researches will remedy these limitations and study Focus on Form teaching approach more deeply and more comprehensively.