| Dictogloss,as one of the “focus on form” instructions,aims to help language learners toward a better understanding of grammatical knowledge based on a context.It has been proved to have optimistic impacts on facilitating grammar learning.For junior high school students,morphological knowledge holds an influential place in grammatical knowledge,which determines various syntactic and semantic functions of a word.The lack of morphological knowledge hinders the correct use of language form.Even language learners with high proficiency level are baffled.How to facilitate foreign language learners to improve morphological accuracy attracts much attention.Thus,the present study makes an attempt to explore the effects of dictogloss on facilitating students’ morphological accuracy,and the effects on improving morphological accuracy for students of different proficiency levels.Besides,this study also investigates what changes take place in students’ attitudes toward dictogloss.The experimental approach is adopted in the present study.The participants are 72 junior high school students of Grade 9 in two intact classes from Jiazhaike Middle School in Jingyuan County,Gansu Province.Class 4 is randomly assigned to the control class,and Class 2 is the experimental class.The control class is treated with the grammar translation method,and the experimental class adopts dictogloss.Before the experiment,a pre-test is conducted to ensure that the two classes are at the same morphological proficiency level,and a pre-experiment questionnaire is applied to the experimental class to discover the changes in students’ attitudes.After a ten-week treatment,a post-test is conducted on both classes to explore the effects of dictogloss on improving students’ morphological accuracy,and a post-experiment questionnaire is implemented in the experimental class to discover the changes in students’ attitudes.The test papers and questionnaires are used for data collection,and SPSS 23.0 is employed to analyze data through independent samples t-test and paired samples t-test.The conclusions are as follows.Firstly,dictogloss is tested to be an effective teaching instruction for junior high school students to increase their morphological achievements and language accuracy.Students do better in using correct morphological forms,especially inflectional morphological forms.This is because most inflectional morphology is tightly related to verb tenses,which is trained sufficiently in dictogloss.Secondly,dictogloss is beneficial for students of three different levels to gain more achievements in morphological accuracy.It exerts more significant effects on low-level and high-level students.Besides,students gain positive attitudes toward dictogloss after the experiment.Students consider it an effective and creative teaching instruction for them to improve their English achievements and hope to continue dictogloss in further English learning.Moreover,students have a more comprehensive understanding of the significance of dictogloss in meaning and form.Finally,the limitation of the present study is stated,and some implications,as well as suggestions,are put forward for further studies. |
