An Experimental Study Of The Acquisition Of English Reduced Structures In Senior High School Under The Premise Of Focus-On-Form

“Form” and “meaning” are two factors in need of being weighed in L2 teaching.Attending the former only in teaching has a tendency to account for a high accuracy of the learner's language output,the fluency of which,however,will be greatly affected;while attending the latter only will make a contribution to high fluency but low accuracy in output.Focus on Form(FOF)compromises the merits of Focus on Forms(FOFs)and Focus on Meaning(FOM),which provides a point of convergence for achieving students' high fluency and accuracy of target language.English Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017 Edition)pointed out that English teaching of high school is mainly under the guidance of viewpoints of English Learning Activities,in an attempt to cultivate learners' core competence.Therefore,the probability of high accuracy and fluency may be achieved in the textual interpretation activities,which are subject to text meaning by analyzing and solving problems in the process of interpreting textual meaning,and meanwhile guiding learners to attend language forms.English Reduced Structure,as the advanced sequence of English learners and the simplification or austerity phase of coordinate sentences or compound clauses,is a simplified clause,of which the generative semantics is equivalent to relevant coordinate sentences or compound clauses after the deep structures are transformed on the basis of certain rules.English Reduced Structure is composite of Nominative English Reduced Structure,Adjective English Reduced Structure,and Adverbial English Reduced Structure.From the perspective where cognition stands,English Reduced Structure is one of most difficult target language form to acquire,but FOF provides a theoretical guidance for the teaching of English Reduced Structure.That is to say,the teaching happens in natural classroom settings under the premise of FOM and Viewpoints of English Learning Activities,where teachers guide learners to adopt various form-focused strategies in the interactive activities of discourse analysis,construct classroom settings integrated with FOF and draw learners' attention to notice the target structures,which thereby contributes to the acquisition of the target forms and the development of the inter-language and English competence.The present study has been conducted in classroom settings,94 students from two classes in the second year of a senior school in Xinjiang having been taken as the experimental objects,and English Reduced Structures having been selected as the target teaching items to conduct five teaching interventions for five weeks.Class A is an experimental class(EC)on the basis of the teaching models of Focus on Form;Class B is a controlled class(CC)which is based on the teaching model of Focus on Forms.The purpose of the present study is to explore the immediate and delayed effects of two different teaching models on Grammar Comprehension Ability and Controlled Production Ability,and Free Production Ability.The following two questions are anticipated to be answered: 1)What are the results of EC and CC in the pretest,immediate post-test,post-test and delayed-test on the items of Grammar Comprehension Ability and Controlled Production Ability? And are there any significant differences ? Are there any differences in the basic unit of writing,the total amount and frequency of utilizing English Reduced Structure,the indexes of syntactic complexity and the indexes of austerity? 2)Are there any differences between EC and CC in maintaining effects of Grammar Comprehension Ability and Controlled Production Ability? Are there any differences in maintaining effects of the basic unit of writing,the total amount and frequency of utilizing English Reduced Structure,the indexes of syntactic complexity and the indexes of austerity on the items of Free Production Ability?The findings are shown as follows: 1)In the pretest,immediate post-tests and post-test,there are slight disparities in the mean of the items of Grammar Comprehension Ability and Controlled Production Ability between EC and CC,but the differences are not significant;In the delayed post-test,there are significant differences in the items of Grammar Comprehension Ability and Controlled Production Ability between them.On Free Production Ability,there were no significant differences in the basic units of writing(except S and T)in the pretest,there being significant difference in the post-test(except CP)and EC being larger than CC,there being significant differences(except CP)in the delayed post-test and EC being larger than CC;There was no significant difference in the frequency and total amount of the use of English Reduced Structures in the five immediate post-tests;There are significant differences in the five syntactic complexity indexes(except T/S)in the pretest and no significant differences in the post-test,but there are significant differences in the delayed post-test(except MLS and T/S)and EC was larger than CC;There are no significant differences in the pretest(except ERS/DC and ERS/CT)and post-test(except ERS/CT),but there are significant differences(except ERS/CP)in the delayed post-test,and EC is larger than CC.2)There are different trends in the instant effect and delayed effect of teaching between EC and CC.First of all,there is no significant difference between the EC and CC in the immediate effect of Grammar Comprehension Ability of English Reduced Structure,but the EC's Grammar Comprehension Ability is maintained better in comparison with CC,of which their Grammar Comprehension Ability declined significantly.To be specific,in grammatical recognition items,the EC can maintain the immediate effect,while the CC declines significantly;On grammatical judgment items,the two classes dropped in a significant way,but the experimental class dropped less.Secondly,there is no significant difference in the immediate effects of the two classes on the Controlled Production Ability items,but the delayed effect is significantly different,the EC having a better maintenance effect,and the CC showing a significant decline.In grammatical gap-filling items,the EC attained more growth and keep growing slightly,while the CC did not attain;On inter-language transference items,the EC could keep the immediate effect,but the CC couldn't;On intro-language translation items,two acquired effects of EC were better than CC.Thirdly,on the item of Production Ability,the syntactic complexity and the austerity of the learner's written language,due to the frequent usage of English Reduced Structure,have different trends in the immediate effects and effects as follows:(1)The basic units of writing are significantly different,the EC is generally larger than the CC;(2)The indexes of the syntactic complexity of the two classes are inconsistent,of which the EC' syntactic index having reduced due to the dense usage of English Reduced Structure,indicating that the syntax is more simplified and compacted;while the CC's develops in a linear way,which shows that the syntax is more complicated achieve simplification;(3)The compacted indexes are significantly different,all of which,except for the compound phrases ratio index,the EC has a linear growth,indicating that the Production Ability of English Reduced Structure is better;However,the compacted indexes of the CC,except for the parallel phrase ratio index,show a linear decline,indicating that their production ability remains weak.Finally,the present study demonstrates the reasons for the immediate and delayed effects of FOM,and provides three suggestions for the teaching of language structures: namely,constructing a natural classroom settings integrated with FOM,setting up a typical text interpretation activity in which target language items are attended and creating contexts to provide a real pragmatic environment for the usage of the target language form,which thereby offer new references for language teaching.