Differential effects of explicit form-focused instruction on morphosyntactic development

Abstract

This study explores whether and to what degree explicit form-focused instruction (FFI) facilitates the use of morphosyntactic forms in second language oral production and also whether it has differential effects on morphosyntactic forms with different linguistic variables. Twenty-seven university-level Chinese EFL participants were randomly assigned to a control group and an experimental group. While the control group watched a television episode in English, the experimental group completed two form-focused activities (rule review and self-correction) designed to draw their attention to noun plural, past tense, and third-person singular in English in their oral production. All participants completed oral production pre- and post-test measures, the results of which showed that explicit FFI promoted the use of the target forms and that the facilitative effects were dependent on the complexity and regularity of the morphosyntactic forms. Regular (as opposed to irregular) and more complex morphosyntactic forms appeared to benefit more significantly from explicit FFI.

Keywords:

• form-focused instruction
• morphosyntactic development
• complexity
• regularity

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by a grant from the Jiangsu Social Sciences Fund (No. 11YYD019) and the State Scholarship Fund of China (No. 2011832579). The paper was presented at the 11th International Conference of the Association for Language Awareness at Concordia University on 9 July 2012. We thank the co-editors and the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hainu Xu

Dr Hainu Xu is currently an associate professor at the English Language Department, School of Foreign Languages, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine. Her research interests include form-focused instruction, L2 English morphosyntactic development, and ELT material development and evaluation.

Roy Lyster

Dr Roy Lyster is currently a professor at the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University. His research examines content-based second language instruction and the effects of instructional interventions – such as teacher scaffolding and corrective feedback – designed to counterbalance form-focused and content-based approaches. His research interests also include collaboration among language teachers for integrated language learning and biliteracy development.