A Study On The Effects Of Planned Focus-on-Form Instruction And Incidental Focus-on-Form Instruction

Recently,Focus on Form Instruction(FOFI)has gradually become a hot research field in the Second Language Acquisition(SLA)and English as a Foreign Language Teaching(EFL)both abroad and home.Some studies compare the FOFI with other instructions on grammar,vocabulary and pronunciation,etc.Some are about different types of Incidental Focus on Form Instruction(IFOFI).While there is scarcely research about the Planned Focus on Form Instruction(PFOFI)and IFOFI on grammar learning.This paper,based on Noticing Hypothesis,Interaction Hypothesis,and Input Enhancement,investigates the effects of PFOFI and IFOFI on non-finite verbs learning to provide some pedagogical suggestions for English grammar learning.The research questions are:1.Are there any immediate effects between PFOFI and IFOFI on the Senior students' non-finite verbs learning? If so,which one is more effective?2.Are there any delayed effects between PFOFI and IFOFI on theSenior students' non-finite verbs learning? If so,which one is more effective?3.What are the students' attitudes towards PFOFI and IFOFI? And which one can arouse students' interests better in non-finite verbs learning?118 students were taken from two parallel classes in a Senior High school in Zhang Jiakou,Hebei Province.Students in two parallel classes in Senior Grade one were chosen as subjects for a six-week experiment.One class was named as experimental class one(EC1),whose students received PFOFI;the other was called experimental class two(EC2),whose students received IFOFI.The instruments used in the experiment were tests,questionnaires and interviews.The pre-test is to check whether the students of the two classes are at the same level.Post-test and delayed-test are to test whether there is any difference in immediate effect or delayed effect on non-finite verbs learning.Through the analysis of the questionnaires and interviews,the students' attitudes and interests towards these two kinds of teaching methods can be shown.The scores of the three tests and questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS 21.0.The data from the interview were analyzed by the author.The results of data analysis showed that PFOFI was not only more effective than IFOFI on non-finite verbs learning whether in immediate effect or delayed effect but also improved the students' interests innon-finite verbs learning.However,IFOFI was also beneficial to English non-finite verbs learning from the analysis.Therefore,both PFOFI and IFOFI are necessary.Teachers should use the PFOFI firstly so students can notice the target form,which is very salient so students can notice them easily and pick up the ability of noticing forms during their language learning process.But the students also need opportunities to combine what they have learned to this new form and notice other linguistic usage.Then they can use the IFOFI so that students can develop other language usages.