Effects Of Focus On Form On Senior High School Students' Acquisition Of English Attributive Clauses:An Empirical Study

Grammar learning has been an important component of second language acquisition.Traditional teaching method of grammar mainly centers on teachers' explanation of language rules and mechanical drills,which fails to enable students to use the grammar fluently in communication.As a new teaching idea,Focus on Form(FonF)has been a heated topic in the research of language pedagogy since it was proposed by Long Michael in 1990s.Previous studies on FonF were conducted mainly in ESL(English as a Second Language)context,whereas the studies implemented in EFL(English as a Foreign Language)context were relatively rare.Furthermore,few studies were carried out in China to testify the effectiveness of FonF on senior high school students'acquisition of grammar.This study selects the English attributive clause as the target grammar item,aiming to explore the effects of FonF on grammar teaching in senior high schools.Based on the interactive hypothesis,noticing hypothesis and input processing theory,this study aims to discuss the following two questions:1)What is the effect of FonF on students' comprehension of English attributive clauses?2)What is the effect of FonF on students' written production of English attributive clauses?In the research,95 senior high school students from two parallel classes in Hunan Wugang No.1 middle school were selected as the participants.The experiment lasted over a span of four weeks.The research instrument mainly involved grammar tests,including pre-test and post-test.And the data from the two tests was mainly analyzed by SPSS.The study discovered that:1)After the teaching experiment,students in experimental class made greater progress than those in control class in comprehension of attributive clauses,and the difference was significant,which can be mostly reflected in identification of attributive clauses;2)As for the production of attributive clauses,students in both classes made great progress,though students in experimental class performed better,the difference was not noticeable.Based on the results and analysis,it can be concluded that FonF is effective in the teaching of English attributive clauses;it can promote students' comprehension and production of attributive clauses.This research enriches the study of FonF in foreign language grammar teaching.It could provide some pedagogical implications and guidance for grammar teaching in senior high schools.However,there still exist some limitations.Firstly,the small sample of the experiment can hardly represent the general applicability.Besides,the experiment time is relatively short,which cannot testify the effectiveness of FonF in the long term.In sum,more related researches need to be conducted to further investigate the effectiveness of FonF in grammar teaching in senior high schools.