A Study Of Incidental Focus On Form In Senior High School English Classrooms

Based on the study of second language acquisition, incidental focus on form is a skill in foreign language classroom teaching. It “overtly draws learners’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication”. Incidental focus on form is considered to be an integration of meaning-focused and form-focused activities in the foreign language classroom.On the foundation of the research framework of Loewen(2005) and Zhao and Bitchener(2007), this research used the approach of class observation, testing and interview to describe the frequency rate, focuses and types of incidental focus on form, to explore the types of feedback and uptake in incidental focus on form in senior high school English classrooms, to analyze the relationship between incidental focus on form and students’ foreign language learning and to investigate the factors that influence the practice of incidental focus on form in senior high school English classrooms..Classroom observation, recording and transcription of 16 meaning-focused English lessons by 4 teachers in a key senior high school in Hunaggang demonstrated the following 5 aspects of incidental focus on form in senior high school English classrooms: 1. there was 0.389 incidental focus on form episode per minute; 2. the number of reactive focus on form was more than ten times that of preemptive focus on form; 3. grammatical and lexical focuses were paid the most attention to; 4. recast was the most frequently-used type of feedback; 5. there were slightly more failures of uptake than occurrence of successful uptake. Post-tests and data analysis showed incidental focus on form was positively correlated with foreign language learning. Results from interviews illustrated pressure from the course schedule affected the attitudes of the teacher participants towards incidental focus on form and their practice the most greatly. What most affected the attitudes of the students towards incidental focus on form and their performance in classroom incidental focus on form were their personality and English proficiency. Some pedagogical implications of this study were also given.