Improving the first year students' grammar through focus-on-form instruction at University of Economic and Technical Industries

Significance of the study In the context of English learning and teaching at UNETI also exists a problematic gap between communication –based course book and grammar- based examinations

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS vi

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES viii

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Significance of the study 2

3 Aims and scope of the study 3

4 Research methods 4

5 Organization of the study Error! Bookmark not defined DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Grammar 5

1.1.1 Definition of grammar 5

1.1.2 Kinds of grammar 5

1.1.3 Effect of grammar instruction on students‟ grammar mastery 6

1.2 Focus-on-form instruction (FFI) 9

1.2.1 Focus-on-form, focus on forms and focus on meaning 9

1.2.2 Definition of Focus-on-form instruction 10

1.2.3 Kinds of focus-on-form 12

1.2.4 Focus-on-form teaching techniques 16

1.2.5 Focus-on-form previous research 21

1.3 Summary 23

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 24

2.1 The experimental setting 24

2.2 Participants and material description 25

2.2.1 Participants 25

2.2.2 Material description 26

2.3 Research questions and hypotheses 29

2.4 Target structure 29

2.5 Research design: experimental research 31

2.6 Research procedure 32

2 7 Data collection instruments 36

2.7.1 Questionnaire 36

2.7.2 Pre-test and post-test 38

2.7.3 Interview 48

2.8 Data collection procedure 49

2.9 Summary 51

CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 52

3.1 Statistical analysis 52

3.2 Results 52

3.2.1 Factors relating focus-on-form instruction to develop students‟ grammar 52

3.2.2 Improving students‟ grammar through focus-on-form instruction 61

3.2.3 Applying focus-on-form instruction to improve UNETI students‟ grammar 72

3.3 Discussion 76

3.4 Summary 79

CONCLUSION 80

1 Review of the study 80

2 Findings 80

3 Pedagogical implications 81

4 Further research 82

BIBLIOGRAPHY 83

APPENDIX 1: PRETEST I

APPENDIX 2: POSTTEST II

APPENDIX 3: PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT III

APPENDIX 4: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE V

APPENDIX 5: CÂU HỎI PHỎNG VẤN VII

APPENDIX 6: INTERVIEW VIII APPENDIX 7: STUDENTS’ RAW SCORES IN THE PRETEST - POSTTEST IX

LIST OF SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

CO Control group

CR Consciousness raising task

EFL English as a Foreign Language

EA Error analysis task

EX Experimental group

GT Tense gap-fill task

IELTS International English Language Testing System

L2 Second Language; Foreign Language

MCR Multiple-choice recognition task

M Mean (average score)

P p-value, probability value

PC Present continuous tense

PS Present simple tense

TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

TOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language

TOEIC Test of English for International Communication

UNETI University of Economic and Technical Industries

% mark Percentage mark

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Grammar focus in the course book New Headway Pre- Intermediate (Liz and John

Soars, 2003) 28

Table 2: The list of grammar points tested 41

Table 3: Percentage marks of grammar points tested 42

Table 4: Proportion of grammar points tested 42

Table 5: The same content of pre-test and post-test 43

Table 6: Students‟ profile 53

Table 7: Descriptive statistics on pretest overall scores for experimental group (EG) and control group (CG) 61

Table 8: Learning gains difference of posttests between experimental group and control group 62

Table 9: Learning gains from pre- to posttest for experimental group 62

Table 10: Learning gains of experimental group from pre- to posttest for the multiple-choice recognition task 63

Table 11: Learning gains of experimental group from pre- to posttest for the error analysis task 64

Table 12: Learning gains of experimental group from pre- to posttest for the tense gap-fill task 64

Table 13: Experimental group‟s development means on three subtasks from pre- to post tests 65

Table 14: Students‟ grammar improvement basing on pass/fail criteria 67

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Students‟ response to previous grammar learning experience 54

Figure 4: Students‟ attitude to the importance of grammar learning 57

Figure 7: Experimental group‟s development means on three subtasks from pre- to post

Figure 9: Students‟ attitude to communication in FFI activities 69 Figure 10: Students‟ attitude to deducing rules through communication 70

Figure 12: Students‟ difficulties in drawing out rules with teacher‟s assistance 73

INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

In modern times, English is an indispensable tool for those who want to communicate well

in international working as well as achieve success To have good knowledge of a language in general and English in specific, a learner has to master four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and three language aspects (vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar) In learning English, language skills and language aspects are interrelated each other, thus, cannot be separated Specifically, language aspects help to perfect the language skills Learning English well requires students to use appropriate basic and structural patterns to master grammar and vocabulary

Grammar is an important aspect for forming words and building English sentences Chomsky in Radford (1988, p.3) states that grammar is a model (systemic description) of those linguistic abilities of native speakers of a language which enable them to speak From the Chomsky‟s point of view in the above explanation, grammar is the most important aspect to communicate with other people, because grammar can show our meaning in communication so that other people can understand our message Grammar includes phonological (sound), morphology (word composition), and syntax (sentence composition) (Hall, 1993, p.3) Generally, learning grammar is essential since it helps students to achieve their short term goal of passing grammar-based exams and the long term goal of using English in real life situations for future jobs

For over three years of teaching English at University of Economic and Technical Industries (UNETI), I have worked out that grammar plays such an important part in assessing students because it is a major component in any tests - about ninety percent of criteria Additionally, students also perceive grammar as the first element to master However, learning grammar well seems to be threatening with most students Unlike specialized students of high motivation and hard work, non-major ones feel bored with learning by heart so many complicated and boring rules and structures mechanically but not meaningfully and communicatively Additionally, a deductive approach to grammar method commonly applied at UNETI is not interesting, thus learners feel bored In

teaching grammar, the teacher shows the rules directly, thus students do not understand the use in sentence or context Moreover, the students are usually confused of rules and the uses of tenses Accordingly, they get bored, frightened and even ignore learning grammar

As a result, a lot of students have low scores on English caused by the failure in mastering grammar

To improve students‟ English, I have experimented many ways to deal with this problem Finally, I have found focus on form instruction as the most appropriate solution to this problem at UNETI Beneficially, characteristics of focus on form both help students to achieve their goals of grammar and enable them to use it in communication To make use

of communicative grammar teaching techniques with purpose of helping students to be interested and inspired to learn grammar, I have decided to conduct a study on:

“Improving the first year students’ grammar through focus-on-form instruction at

University of Economic and Technical Industries”

2 Significance of the study

In the context of English learning and teaching at UNETI also exists a problematic gap between communication –based course book and grammar- based examinations The completion of the research will not only solve the problems for classroom practitioners but also benefit students, administrators as well as researchers working on related fields Besides, the research can reveal much useful information about the actual situation

Additionally, together with the tendency of the world the university tries to improve students‟ ability to meet the requirement for TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) so that educated students can communicate well in international communication working The research finds a way to combine both grammar and communicative approach to teach grammar In other words, the research tries to teach grammar through communication

More importantly, results in this project can, hopefully, be the first steps to further study or discovery to let students learn English with their desires, needs and interest, which build their motivation and confidence If the research has effective effect on students, it will surely open a new door to inspire students to love grammar – the matter used to be so

boring and discouraging with them Above all, the study results will prove the efficacy of focus-on-form instruction on students‟ grammar mastery

3 Aims and scope of the study

Aims of the study

The research aims at making use of focus on form instruction to improve students‟ language structural patterns while they remain primarily focused on meaning or communication To serve this purpose, the research seeks information to:

 Describe factors helping the first-year learners to develop their grammar

 Experiment whether the use of focus on form instruction can improve the first year students‟ grammar

 Anticipate students‟ difficulties to apply focus-on-form instruction to teaching grammar

Scope of the study

For the time, material, ability and thesis limit, the research tries to improve the grammar of the first year students at UNETI – the beginners who are thoroughly affected by the first impression of learning grammar, which is a decisive element for their English learning success in a long run I have no ambitions to enable students to achieve both long term goal

of communication jobs and short term goal of grammatical exams, thus the thesis aims at developing students‟ grammatical patterns to achieve their soonest goal of passing grammar-based exams Accordingly, “grammar” in the research mentions structural patterns to complete mechanical grammatical exercises in UNETI final exams well Grammar here does not mean communicative grammar competence which helps students

to use grammar in real life situations

Among many grammar points, the research pays attention to the verb tenses, especially present simple and present continuous raised in the course book “New Headway Pre-Intermediate” by Liz and John Soars, Oxford University Press It is because present simple and present continuous tenses are rather common but confusing for starters like the freshman, which is also the reason to choose these two verb tenses to be target structure

4 Research methods

The study uses experimental method as the research method to test the causal relationship between focus-on-form instruction and students‟ improved grammatical competence The research aims at checking the hypothesis whether the independent variable “focus-on-form instruction” has any effect on the dependent variable “students‟ grammatical competence”

The experimental study uses both quantitative data through pre-and post tests together with questionnaire and qualitative data from structured and semi-structured interview

5 Organization of the study

The study is divided into three main parts with three development chapters as follows:

The first part is Introduction which provides the background information including

rationale, significance, aims, scope, research method, and organization of the study

The second part is Development, which is the main part of the study, consists of three key chapters including Literature Review, Research Methodology and Results with Discussion

The first chapter “Literature Review” reviews literature related to the study including

grammar notion with classification, focus-on-form instruction notion, activities, teaching techniques and previous research which would hopefully provide the readers with a detailed background to the research

The second chapter “Research Methodology” describes the research method, the research

procedure, the detailed description of data collection instruments and subjects of the study The data collection instruments consisting of pre- and post tests, questionnaire and interview are thoroughly presented with rationale, description and the way to use instruments to collect data

The third chapter “Results and Discussion” summarizes the results of the study in relation

to the research questions and hypothesis presented in Chapter 1 Additionally, the results are discussed and compared with other previous research findings

The last part Conclusion summarizes the study‟s findings, discusses pedagogical

implications, and suggests areas for future research

DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Grammar

1.1.1 Definition of grammar

From Celce-Murcia (1988, p 16) “grammar is a subset of those rules which govern the configuration that the morphology and syntax of a language assume” It also means that grammar is a field of linguistics that involves all the various things that makes up the rules language

Ur (1988, p 4) defines that “grammar may be roughly defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words (or bits of words) in order to form loner units of meaning.” Afterwards, in 1996, he stated, “grammar is a set of rules that define how words (or parts of words) are combined or changed to form acceptable unit of meaning within a language” Clearly, grammar makes up all the words and structures in a sentence There is

a set of rules which governs how units of meaning may be constructed in any language According to Silva, Joyce, and Burns, 1999, p.4-5 “grammar is essentially about the systems and patterns we use to select and combine words ” To some extent, this definition agrees with the view in 1996 by Ur Additionally, Nunan (2003) defined the grammar of a language as “the description of the way in which words change their forms and are combined into sentences in that language If those rules are violated, communication suffers” This is also the definition used in my study In short, grammar is the study of the structure and features of a language Grammar usually consists of rules and standards that are to be followed to produce acceptable writing and speaking

1.1.2 Kinds of grammar

Like “grammar”, kinds of grammar are classified according to various criteria Jacob, R.A distinguishes three types of grammar: mental grammar, descriptive grammar and prescriptive grammar In Encarta Encyclopedia, grammar is considered in terms of five approaches: prescriptive, historical, comparative, functional and descriptive Despite these

ways of classification‟s difference, they all share the two same types: descriptive grammar and prescriptive grammar

Both are concerned with rules but in different ways A prescriptive approach to grammar

presents authoritative norms about the structure of a language and determines language use correct or incorrect, good or bad according to those sets of rules It condemns all styles or dialects of a language except the standard or classical type These rules were further subdivided by Vavra (1996) into rules and syntax Usage includes rule about concepts like rhetorical questions and slang words Syntax encompasses rules of sentence structure and its component parts Most of the “rules” people learn in grade school are of this kind

Descriptive grammar tries to look at how language is actually used by native speakers

and from that draws the rule of language use The latter is usually bound to a particular speech community and attempts to provide rules for actual language use which is considered grammatically correct within that community

From a pedagogical point of view, it is not surprising that prescriptive remains common as

a huge majority of ELT teachers are non-native speakers, who are by no means in constant contact with actual target language use A prescriptive grammar is then a reliable resource

to draw on

It does not mean that descriptive grammar has no place in grammar teaching With the prevalent teaching and learning a language for communicative purposes, learners are encouraged to be exposed to authentic language – the language used in real English – speaking context Yet, prescriptive grammar is a subset of actual language use

Practically, in the study, descriptive grammar with authentic language is made use of as a way to motivate students to figure out prescriptive grammar with structures and rules Hopefully, this mixture of two grammar kinds will improve non-major freshman students‟ grammar mastery at UNETI

1.1.3 Effect of grammar instruction on students’ grammar mastery

1.1.3.1 Negative effect of grammar instruction on grammar mastery

Since 1970s, with the arising of communicative language teaching and “natural” method, whether grammar instruction should be included in second/foreign language teaching has been a focus of debate (Ellis, 1999a, p.1) An anti-grammar movement arose, in which Krashen was the chief advocate (Hedge, 2000, p.143-144), who thinks that there is a

distinction between “learning” and “acquisition”, that “Learning, …, cannot lead to acquisition” (Richards & Rodgers, 2000, p.131), and that “formal instruction in grammar will not contribute to the development of „acquired‟ knowledge - the knowledge needed

to participate in authentic communication” (Krashen, 1982, cited in Ellis, 1992, p.232) His view was supported by many people, such as Skehen (1998) and DeKeyster (1998) In

1997, the Natural Approach was developed by Tracy Terrell and Stephen Krashen, starting

in 1997 The Natural Approach bases on the following tenets: language acquisition (an unconscious process developed through using language meaningfully) is different from language learning (consciously learning or discovering rules about a language) and language acquisition is the only way competence in a second language occurs (the acquisition/ learning hypothesis)

 Conscious learning operates only as a monitor or editor that checks or repairs the output of what has been acquired (the monitor hypothesis)

 Grammatical structures are acquired in a predictable order and it does little good

to try to learn them in another order (the natural order hypothesis)

 People acquire language best from messages that are slightly beyond their current competence (the input hypothesis)

 The learner‟s emotional state can act as a filter that impedes or blocks input necessary to acquisition (the affective filter hypothesis)

In the Natural Approach, the teacher is expected to be the provider of comprehensible input

in the target language, emphasizes comprehensible and meaningful practice activities rather than production of grammatically perfect utterances and sentences

Thus, now formal instruction in grammar is not needed in first language, nor is in second language acquisition (ibid.) Also, Prabhu succeeded, in some degree, in showing that

“learners can acquire an L2 grammar naturalistically” by attending classroom focused tasks” (1987, cited in Ellis, 1992, p.232)

“meaning-1.1.3.2 Positive effect of grammar instruction on grammar mastery

However, in recent years, some other researchers and methodologists hold new perspectives towards grammar instruction They have argued, theoretically and

empirically, that “grammar teaching does aid L2 acquisition” (Ellis, 1992 p.232) As early

as in 1988, Long thinks that formal grammar teaching aids learners to acquire L2 more rapidly and get higher achievement (cited in Ellis, 1999a: 3) Celce-Murcia also concludes that “some focus on form may well be necessary for many learners to achieve accuracy as well as fluency” while “grammarless approach, …, can lead to the development of a broken, ungrammatical pidginized form of the target language beyond which students rarely progress” (1991) For this view, Nassaji & Fotos (2004) summarized four reasons: Firstly, some researchers, such as Schimidt (1990, 2001), proved that “noticing” is one of the necessities in language learning, compared with the theory that language is not learned consciously, but acquired unconsciously

Secondly, some methodologists, such as Pienemann (1984), have found that though the sequence of acquisition in grammar cannot be changed, grammar instruction can accelerate the process of learning some structures

Thirdly, due to the fact that communicative language teaching has not produced ideal outcomes in its practice, which lays emphasis on the meaningful communication whereas ignores the structural forms of language completely, Swain (1985) and his colleagues concluded that the most effective way to improve the ability of using grammar accurately

is to use formal instruction after they did the research on “immersion programme” to some English learners, and found that though they had been exposed to considerable corpus, they still could not use some structural forms correctly

Fourthly, for the last 20 years, considerable empirical classroom teaching research has demonstrated that classroom grammar instruction has great effect on second language acquisition For example, Doughty (1991), in her empirical study of SL relativization, illustrated that “second language instruction does make a difference.”

Thus, based on the research up to date, Ellis concludes that though it does not enable learners to change the natural order of acquisition, grammar instruction has an effect in helping learners to make more rapid progress along it, and has lasting effect when it is indeed effective on learners (2002, p 50)

In modern times, basing most exams for non-major students in Vietnam in general and University of Economic and Technical Industries (UNETI) in particular, grammar is the

main criterion to assess students It means that English course at UNETI emphasizes the positive effect of grammar instruction which helps students not only to pass the grammar exams but also to communicate well The thesis also supports for the view of teaching grammar to improve students‟ grammar mastery

1.2 Focus-on-form instruction (FFI)

1.2.1 Focus-on-form, focus on forms and focus on meaning

In the literature of grammar teaching, three notions: focus on forms, focus on form and focus on meaning have become widely used and often-heard However, sometimes, three notions can be misunderstood and misused Thus, in order to get deeper insight into focus-on-form instruction, it is essential to have a clear cut view of three notions:

Firstly, focus on forms (plural) is a traditional way that is, according to Long, limited to

instruction on discrete points of specific language form in isolation, with no apparent focus

on meaning In university language teaching, teachers focus on the explanation of the words, sentences and the main idea of the text by translation After having understood the different forms in the texts, the students have no chance to practice speaking and listening The problem of focus-on-forms is to lay emphasis on language structures than students‟ comprehensive abilities of using foreign language Consequently, students become almost

“structurally competent but communicatively incompetent”

Secondly, focus on meaning is a student-centered teaching which draws students‟

attention to meaning Focus on meaning based on the notion of communicative competence asserts that the primary objective of a second or a foreign language program must provide language learners with the information practice and much of the experience needed to meet the communication needs in the second or foreign language Focus on meaning views language as a tool for communication, insists that inter-action speaking in classrooms be instances of real communication and ensures that students have sufficient exposure to the target language In brief, focus on meaning is an effective way to improve students‟ fluency while neglecting the grammatical accuracy However, focus on meaning stresses the need to foster communicative competence before the mastery of accurate language forms, which makes students ignore grammatical errors, which can be

“fossilizing” errors These fossilized errors have become ingrained language habits after

prolonged usage are extremely difficult to eliminate Hence, it is impossible for language learners to achieve high level of accuracy or native-like proficiency if they follow only focus on meaning instruction

Finally, focus on form is a bridge over focus on forms and focus on meaning In other

words, it is the mixture of focus on forms and focus on meaning Ellis indicates that:

“focus on form entails a focus on meaning with attention to form arising out of the communicative activity” Thus the use of focus on form instruction in the classroom allows the teacher to instruct students to both accuracy and fluency Additionally, it emphasizes the accuracy of language forms in communicative classrooms

The crucial difference is that focus-on-form instruction intends to draw the learners‟ attention to specific language forms within naturalistic communicative contexts in the process of linking form and meaning

Doughty and Williams capture the relationships among all three approaches very well in

their forthcoming book (Doughty and Williams, in press-a): " focus on forms and focus on form are not polar opposites in the way that 'form' and 'meaning' have often been considered to be Rather, a focus on form entails a focus on formal elements of language, whereas focus on forms is limited to such a focus, and focus on meaning excludes it Most important, it should be kept in mind that the fundamental assumption of focus-on-form instruction is that meaning and use must already be evident to the learner at the time that attention is drawn to the linguistic apparatus needed to get the meaning across."

In brief, both focus on form and focus on meaning instruction are available, according to Long (1991) and Long and Robinson (1998), and should complement rather than exclude each other Significantly, focus-on-form instruction maintains a balance between the two

by calling on teachers and learners to attend to form when necessary, yet within a communicative classroom environment

1.2.2 Definition of Focus-on-form instruction

Originally, the term “focus on form instruction” is defined as an attempt “overtly draws students‟ attention to linguistic elements while they arise accidentally in the lessons whose overriding attention is on meaning or communication” (Long, 1991, p 45-46)

Besides, Doughty and William (1998, p.5) point out that “there is considerable variation in how the term focus on form is understood or used” In many of the studies which appear in

an edited volume by Doughty and Williams (1998), focus on form instruction is not known

as something incidental (contrary to Long‟s original definition of the term); rather it is treated as a proactive or intentional attempt to teach certain linguistic forms communicatively

In Long‟s definition, the main focus or objective of the lesson is on meaning or communication Incidentally, students acquire linguistic elements In other words, in focus-on-form instruction, communication comes first focus on form comes second It occurs just when a student has a communication problem, and so is likely already at least partially to understand the meaning or function of the new form when the student is attending to the input

Long‟s definition above identifies two essential characteristics of focus-on-form: (1) attention to form occurs in lessons where the overriding focus is on meaning or communication, and (2) attention to form arises incidentally in response to communicative need The advantage of this orientation is “the learners‟ attention is drawn precisely to a linguistic feature as necessitated by a communicative demand” (Doughty and William, 1998) From this definition, it can be seen a link between communication fluency and grammar accuracy Hence, through this orientation, students can get grammatical accuracy through effective communication, which is especially useful for non-English major students at UNETI taking English communicative course book to overcome grammar based exams

Later, Ellis (2001) considers “focus-on-form instruction” as “any incidental or planned instructional activities that induce language learners to pay attention to linguistic forms” (p.1-2) It means that this attention to form should take place within a meaningful, communicative context, making it an extension of communicative language teaching not a departure from it From two adjectives in Ellis‟s definition “planned” and “incidental”, it proves that Ellis agrees with Long that the incidental attention to form is entailed when overriding focus is on meaning Creatively, Ellis added the second kind of this instruction

“planned attention to form” to the definition of focus-on-form instruction

Commonly, the term “form” has been used to exclusively refer to grammar, but this is not really what is meant by form As Ellis (2001) argues, the term “form” in focus on form instruction “is intended to include phonological, lexical, grammatical, and pragmalinguistic aspects of a language” With a view of improving students‟ grammar, the term “form” refers mainly to both grammar and meaning In other words, the term focus on form has always been used to refer not just to form but also to the meaning that a form realizes All in all, among the definitions of focus on form instruction, my thesis gets the notion by Ellis (2001) as the theoretical background of my study It is because the definition has been built by the synthesis and combination of other definitions Hence, it gives such a clear, sufficient and scientific view of focus on form instruction

1.2.3 Kinds of focus-on-form

Following Long‟s (1991) original definition of FFI, where attention to form arose incidentally, there existed only incidental FFI Later, subsequent studies expanded the definition to include attention to form that was preplanned Hence, two kinds of focus on

form have been distinguished in the Literature (Ellis, 2005): planned focus-on-form and incidental focus –on-form

Planned focus-on-form involves targeting preselected linguistic items during a meaning

focused activity, either through enrich input (input flood or input enhancement) and meaningful production (e.g corrective feedback on errors in the use of pre-targeted forms) Introduction involving a planned focus on form frequently makes use of enriched input Like structured input, enriched input consists of input that has been specially contrived or modified to present learners with plentiful exemplars of the target structure The aim of enriched input is to induce noticing of the target form in the context of meaning-focused activity

Various options exist for enriching input: input flood, input enhancement and focused communicative tasks as follows

Input flood includes plentiful exemplars without any device to draw attention to the

feature in order to expose students to target feature Hence, acquisition occurs as a result of frequent exposure to a target feature (N Ellis, 1996) For example, Trahey and White

(1993) and Trahey (1996) developed materials consisting stories, games and exercises to simply expose learners to adverbs

Input enhancement (Sharwood Smith 1993) involves some attempt to highlight the target

feature, thus drawing learners‟ attention to it For example, Leeman et al (1995) enhanced input by highlighting instances of Spanish preterit and imperfect verb forms in the written texts used in content-based instruction

Thirdly, focused communicative tasks are tasks that are designed to elicit production of a

specific target feature in the context of performing a communicative task However, in contrast to communicative tasks in general, focused communicative tasks intended to result

in learners‟ employing some features that has been specifically targeted The primary focus

is on the meaning of the form

The second kind of this instruction is incidental focus-on-form instruction Contrary to

planned FFI, in incidental FFI the linguistic items arise spontaneously in the course of meaning-focused activities The option relates to two kinds of incidental focus on form:

preemptive and reactive Both kinds of incidental FFI can arise either because there is a

problem of communication (the interactants have not understood each other) or because there is a problem of form (the interactants have understood each other but nevertheless wish to focus on some form that has arisen in the course of communicative activity)

Reactive FFI occurs when a learner has said something erroneous and the teacher or

another learner reacts to this error by correcting him Thus this kind of focus on form is a good source of supplying learners with negative feedback or evidence

Like reactive focus on form, pre-emptive focus on form is problem oriented However, the nature of the problem that is addressed is somewhat different Whereas reactive FFI involves negotiation and is triggered by something problematic that an interactant has said

or written Pre-emptive FFI involves the teacher or learner initiating attention to form even though no actual problem in production has arisen To put it another way, pre-emptive FFI

is an attempt by the teacher or a learner to initiate explicit attention to a linguistic form to prevent the occurrence of an erroneous form William(1999) looked at the ways in which learners initiate attention to form in learner-learner interactions, reporting that this occurred most frequently when learners requested assistance from the teacher A very clear example

of pre-emptive FFI occurs when teachers or learners ask questions: “How do you spell…”

or “How do you pronounce …” to preempt probable errors

In brief, reactive focus on form addresses errors which have emerged in the context of meaningful communication Preemptive focus on form, on the contrary, addresses problems which are predicted to occur and thus block communication

Reactive focus-on-form has received much more attention It consists of the negative

feedback teachers provide in response to learners‟ actual or perceived errors The negative

feedback can be divided into two types including implicit negative feedback and explicit negative feedback

Implicit negative feedback appears “when learners supply a linguistically incorrect

response in reply to a teacher initiation … the teacher tends to avoid direct, explicit, overt negative evaluation” as commented by Seedhouse (1997a) In this view, “implicit” can be understood indirect, implied or hidden Hence, the learner is told indirectly or implicitly about their errors Additionally, the teacher displays a general preference and relies extensively on recasts which are defined as reformulations that negotiate form and negotiation of meaning as involving confirmation checks used to clarify understanding In other words, without directly indicating that students‟ utterance is incorrect, the teacher implicitly reforms the students‟ errors or provides correction Notably, a number of studies

(by Long et al 1998; Mackey and Philip, 1998) have concluded that recasts assist

acquisition

Farrar (1990, cited in Braidi, 2002) remarks that recasts include additions, substitutions, and reordering These matters are shown in this example from Farrar (p 612)

(1) Addition Child: Phone ring

Mother: The phone is ringing (2) Substitution

Child: I can move

Mother: You will move (3) Reordering Child: It is raining

Mother: Is it raining?

Some other implicit options are available to teachers such as requests for clarification and repetition (often with the learner‟s error highlighted by intonation) Clarification

requests, as stated by Lyster (1998), require learners to clarify what they said by the uses of phrases and sentences like “Excuse me?, Beg your pardon?.” Lin Giong also claimed that clarification request calls for teachers to use strategies as “Pardon?”, “I‟m sorry?” for clarification when the learner fails to comprehend due to the phonological problems in turn-taking This strategy also aims at pointing out the wrong expressions of the learner to enable the latter to clarify his incorrect expression by repetition, explanation, addition, expansion and so on

For example: S: can, can I made a cake with … for my mother on her birth…day T: pardon?

Experimental type studies of clarification requests involving type 2 FFI (Ellis & Takashima, 1999; Noboyoshi &Ellis, 1993) have also provided evidence of long term effects on acquisition

Repetitions appear when the learners‟ errors highlighted by intonation including the use of

raising tone, repetition of the incorrect part of the learners utterance to attract his attention

For example: S: the … the foreigners?

T: the foreigners?

Explicit negative feedback, as indicated by Long and Robinson, is when the learner is

told directly what the error is or is given metalingual information relating to the correct form) “Explicit” in this notion means direct, fully expressed, defined or formulated Explicit feedback draws students‟ attention to the error directly Accordingly, the explicit feedback is dis-preferred in all types of focus-on-form instruction This direct feedback is clearly more obtrusive than indirect feedback However, nowadays, teachers are advised to view errors positively, which reflects a sociolinguistic need on the part of teachers to protect the face of their students

Lyster and Ranta (1997) identify a number of explicit options “Explicit correction”

occurs when a teacher clearly indicates that the learner has said something wrong and

provides the correct form “Metalinguistic feedback” consists of “comments, information

or questions related to the well-formedness of the students‟ utterance” (p.47) Teachers aim

to clarify the nature of the error and elicit the information from the learner

For example, S: uh m, the tiger The tiger growls

T: “do you say the tiger?”

“Elicitation” constitutes an attempt to directly elicit the correct form from students The

teacher uses questions to elicit the learners to recast the correct form or make use of such strategies as pausing for the learners to fill in and complete the utterance

For example: S: well there‟s a stream of perfume that doesn‟t smell very nice

T: So a tream of perfume, we call that a …?

Importantly, Samuda (in press), in the study referred to earlier, found that explicit feedback involving metalinguistic comments and elicitations was necessary to prompt students into using the feature targeted in her focused communication activities

1.2.4 Focus-on-form teaching techniques

Several strategies for integrating form and meaning in instruction have been presented in

the literature as kinds of focus on form instruction In fact, the implicit explicit continuum

persists within the body of techniques used to draw learners‟ attention to form

Implicit focus-on-form techniques can include input flood, input enhancement and task-essential language

In the input flood technique, students are presented with a text that contains many

instances of the target form, with the expectation that students will notice it The technique aims at flooding learners with specific forms The rationale for such an option is that acquisition occurs as a result of frequent exposure to a target feature (N.Ellis, 1996) For example, students can be provided with stories, games, songs or films with high appearance of past simple tense to expose students to this tense Hence, they will take notice of past simple tense

In the technique input enhancement, forms are highlighted with different colored inks,

bold lettering, underlining or other cues intended to raise students‟ awareness of a structure For example, the song “Don‟t cry Joni” used as input enhancement requires learners to read and listen the song and underline the past verbs to draw students‟ attention

to using past simple tense with regular and irregular verbs

The task-essential language technique includes activities that elicit specific linguistic

features For example, students compared 2 cities Pairs of students told each other about features of familiar cities and record the information on task sheets They were then instructed to write sentences comparing the cities according to the features they had described Students were not explicitly taught comparative forms at any point during the task, but they had to use comparative forms to complete it Afterwards, their instructor taught a lesson on comparatives and students rewrote incorrect sentences, did more production exercises and read stories that contained frequent instances of the comparative form

Explicit techniques include consciousness-raising task, focused communicative task, input processing

In consciousness raising tasks (CR tasks), learners are encouraged to determine grammar

rules from evidence presented but not necessarily encouraged their production right away

To put it in another way, consciousness raising task involves drawing learners‟ attention to formal properties of the target language, generally through inductive means whilst retaining the option of some deductive explanation The desired outcome of a CR task is an awareness of how a language feature or features work (Ellis, 2003) Ellis justifies CR activities as tasks on the grounds that they require learners to talk meaningfully about a language point using their own linguistic resources

The focused communicative task (Ellis, 2001, p21) is designed to bring about the

production of a target form in the context of performing a communicative task The task is designed in such a way that the target feature is essential to the performance of the task For example, a task may require one student to give another student detailed instructions to make a birthday cake The first student will likely feel a need to use adverbs such as first, now, then and next to talk the second student through the sequential steps of the task

Input processing helps learners to recognize and understand grammatical forms through

clear examples and explanations

Interaction enhancement includes interactive problem-solving tasks guiding learners to

use target forms in realistic discourse

Dictogloss technique may include a short dictation to students that encourages learners to

collaboratively reconstruct the text presented including the target form For example, the teacher read three times a text containing the target structures The participants initially listen to the readings, next make notes, and later check their notes with other members of their group Subsequently, through pair work or group work, the participants reconstruct the original text

Error correction strategies are another way to explicitly focus on form within a primarily

meaning-focused activity, in that they help learners notice differences between their production and the target (Doughty & William, 1998)

Negotiation refers to interaction and requests for clarification designed to call attention to

specific target language forms In other words, it includes confirmation checks used to clarify understanding Negotiation is defined by Pica as “interactional strategies which are used in order to search a solution to a problem in the course of communication” In order to receive and comprehend the language in a better way, students must negotiate for meaning and form It means they ask for clarification or reformulate the produced error, through which students can pay attention and learn from specific target language forms

Recast is defined as reformulations that negotiate form It aims at guiding learners to

notice their production of non target forms, leading to reformulation with correction Specifically, without directly indicating that the students‟ utterance is incorrect, the teacher implicitly reforms the students‟ error or provides the correction

For example: S: Maple sap?

T: Maple sap Good

The garden path technique introduces a grammatical rule and then leads learners into

situations in which they may over generalize errors and then teachers point out the errors at the time they are made Nation & Newton (2008, p 140) give the following example of a typical garden path technique:

Teacher: Here is a sentence using these words: think and problem I thought about the problem Now you make one using these words: talk and problem

Learner: We talked about the problem

Teacher: Good Argue and result

Learner: We argued about the result

Teacher: Good Discuss and advantages

Learner: We discussed about the advantages

Teacher: No With discuss we do not use about

In the example above, the grammar rule “to verb about something” is introduced by making sentences following model examples However, the student is corrected and thereby is made aware of the exception to the grammatical rule Celce- Murcia (2007) suggests that, instead of creating grammar correction exercises using decontextualized sentences from learners‟ writing, teachers should create short texts that include common error types made by students in their writing Students can work together to edit the more authentic texts, which helps them learn to correct their own work more successfully

Larsen-Freeman (2003) discusses and gives examples of the focus on form production

techniques Collaborative dialogues (p 94-95) are conversations in which students work

together to discuss and use a new form, constructing a sentence together

Another technique, prolepsis (p 95-96), is an instructional conversation that takes place

between a teacher and a student The teacher coaches the student through the process of writing or saying something in English, perhaps incorporating the use of a new form In the following example of a proleptic conversation, a teacher (T) talks with a student (S) at a low intermediate level who is writing a description of an important event in her past (S writes “I got score three.”)

T: Oh, you were sad And then?

S: I cry

T: I see Why don‟t you write it down?

S: I can say it, but I don‟t write

T: Just try it Write what you know

(S writes “I cry.”)

T: Good Ok, cry when? Now?

S: No, I cried

T: Yes Go ahead and write it I‟ll help

(S writes “I cryed.”)

T: Right But remember what happens to the “y”?

(S erases “cryed” and writes “cried.”)

T: Right What happened then?

In the conversation above, both teacher and student are engaged in the story The teacher directs the student to focus also on the formation of the past tense but does not simply tell

her to use the past tense form of cry, nor does she tell her how to spell it In other words,

the teacher defines the parameters of the problem for the student but encourages her to come to the answer on her own

The language experience approach (Larsen-Freeman, 2003, p 96) is a technique, in

which learners dictate to the teacher something they would like to say in English Despite students‟ errors, the teacher writes students‟ messages in correct, grammatical English and gives them to the students For example, a student might say or write, “I late the school for the bad weather.”

The teacher would write the sentence as, “I was late for school because the weather was bad.” With the corrected text in hand, students have the opportunity to compare what they said or wrote with the correct form of the messages they wished to convey, ask questions, and learn

According to Doughty and Williams (1998), there is a degree of obtrusiveness of attention

to form depending on different focus on form techniques as follows:

Unobtrusive <─────────────────────────────> Obtrusive attention to form

1.2.5 Focus-on-form previous research

With the orientation of achieving both communication fluency and grammatical accuracy, focus-on-form instruction catches much attention from researchers Hence, many research studies have been conducted on this issue Some typical researches involving my research will be reviewed and discussed as follows:

Leeman, Arteagoitia, Fridman, and Doughty (1995), compared focus on form instruction and focus on meaning instruction The participants consisted of two groups of US college students in advanced Spanish classes, one of which received focus on form instruction, the other of which received focus on meaning instruction Post-tests revealed that those students who received focus on form instruction were more accurate in their production of Spanish verbs than were those who received focus on meaning instruction

Jourdenais, Ota, Stauffer, Boyson, and Doughty (1995) obtained positive results in the use

of visual input enhancement (specifically, „„textual enhancement‟‟), one type of form methodology They employed textual enhancement for facilitating the noticing of the Spanish past tense forms (preterit and imperfect) by English-speaking second language learners of Spanish Their enhancement protocol involved the use of underlining and a different font to highlight the past tense forms in a printed text along with the bolding of the preterit forms and the shadowing of the imperfect forms The results revealed that the students who received the input enhancement treatment more readily detected the target forms and produced more of the target forms in obligatory contexts in their written productions compared with control group

focus-on-Williams and Evans (1998) studied the precision with which intermediate-level ESL learners used the passive voice and adjectival participles The result showed positive effects that the experimental group receiving input flood gained more accurate use of passive than the control group without any focus-on-form instruction However, no significant differences existed between two groups in terms of their use of adjectival participles

Mahnaz Saeidi, Ph.D Islamic Azad University of Tabriz and Larry Chong, Ph.D

Gyeongju University (2004) compared focus-on-form and focus-on-forms on the achievement of grammatical knowledge of the target structure and its use in context The

participants were 167 Iranian first grade university learners The results showed that on-form group developed the ability to use their grammatical knowledge in context more than focus-on-forms group

focus-Gerald P Berent, Ronald R Kelly, Stephen Aldersley, Kathryn L Schmitz, Baldev Kaur Khalsa, John Panara and Susan Keenan from National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology (2006) conducted a classroom research on focus-on-form instructional methods to promote deal college students‟ improvement in English grammar Two of 3 groups of deaf students received focus-on-form instruction during a 10-week remedial grammar course; a third control group received grammatical instruction that did not involve focus-on-form methods The result showed that the 2 experimental groups exhibited significantly greater improvement in English grammatical knowledge relative to the control group These results validate the efficacy of visually based focus-on-form English instruction for deaf students of English and set the stage for the continual search for innovative and effective English teaching methodologies

As reviewed by Gerald et al, particular studies that failed to establish the efficacy of on-form interventions include Izumi (2002), Leow (1997), and Overstreet (1998) For example, Izumi studied the effect of visual input enhancement on the learning English relative clauses by college-level ESL students The participants read passages in which relative clauses were textually enhanced through underlining and in which relative pronouns (e.g., which) were further enhanced using bolding and a different font Izumi‟s pretest/posttest design employed several assessments including sentence-combining and sentence completion tests, an interpretation test, and a grammaticality judgment test Despite evidence that participants noticed the target forms in the input, the study‟s results revealed that the visual input enhancement did not facilitate the learning of English relative clauses

focus-Han (2005) and focus-Han, Park, and Combs (2005) provided a comprehensive critique of 16 focus-on-form research studies on second-language learning conducted over the past 15 years Han et al (2005) ascertained that many previous studies that failed to show the efficacy of focus-on-form instruction had flaws in their theoretical assumptions or in their research designs Conversely, the studies that demonstrated the efficacy of focus on form possessed arguably positive design characteristics Among these characteristics are the

following The studies were long-term rather than short-term studies, they targeted „„ready learners,‟‟ the interventions provided participants the opportunity to „„act upon‟‟ noticed input, and the interventions allowed participants to process the target input for meaning before processing it for form These positive design characteristics were incorporated into this study and are explained in the Method section

Additionally, many other researches were conducted for other purposes such as effects of form-focused instruction on implicit knowledge or comparing the short-term benefits of two FFI techniques: consciousness-raising and textual input enhancement on the learning

of relative clauses However, in the thesis limit, only research studies involving my study purpose are focused The above focus-on-form researches have been good reference for my study From my teaching context, my thesis aims at improving non-English major learners‟ accuracy whilst retaining meaning focused communication in the course book Headway

In brief, with a practical need from my students from University of Economic and Technical Industries, the thesis is hoped to make use of experience from early research and find out useful research results for the literature of focus-on-form instruction Importantly, the thesis is conducted with the aim of improving the first years‟ students‟ grammar and experiencing students with focus-on-form techniques to measure their grammar improvement

1.3 Summary

In this chapter, the background literature relating the topic is provided Specifically, the notion of grammar, grammar kinds and attitudes to grammar instruction are summarized and reviewed Additionally, the chapter also reviews the notion of focus-on-form in comparison with focus-on-forms and focus on meaning Two FFI kinds and focus-on-form teaching techniques are also presented with notions and examples The last part in the chapter entitled previous research aims at studying previous findings to build a detailed and firm background for the study

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter consists of eight parts Firstly, the experimental setting is presented The second part is participants and material description The third part is about the research questions and hypotheses The fourth part is target structure The fifth part is the research design or the method of the study: Experimental research The sixth part will be about the research procedure The seventh part will describe the data collection instruments and the last part will be about data collection procedure

2.1 The experimental setting

The University of Economic and Technical Industry (UNETI) is a public educational institution and currently has an enrollment of more than 15,000 students The University was founded 53 years ago Originally it was a vocational high school It became a college

in 1995 and in September 2007, it became a University The main function of the UNETI

is to train practical engineers and accountants with majors in information technology, sewing technology, footwear technology, mechanical technology, foodstuff technology, electronic technology, automobile technology, business administration and accounting at university and college level Besides, it also trains workers for light industrial branch The English group is responsible for providing English courses for all the non-major students at the UNETI Specifically, English group which belongs to Basic Department does not have its own specialized students Totally, there are ten teachers in the group The majority of them did the B.A degrees at the University of Language and International Studies under Hanoi National University Some graduated from Hanoi University Nearly half of the teachers of the English group have been pursuing the Master of Arts degree However, with pressure of time and grammar-based exams, traditional grammar translation methodology is still dominantly used to complete the teaching syllabus as scheduled in the English program Importantly, the manager of the group, who has been a master of arts for two years, always encourages teachers to apply new teaching techniques, engaging activities and efficient ideas to improve students

At UNETI, English is a compulsory subject which some students may consider supplementary since they are major in economic and technical areas However, the vice

principle for research and education - Dr Pham Huu Duc Duc- always emphasized the importance of English when he made a speech on teachers‟ conference To improve and stimulate students to learn English well, the management board has taken effective actions Specifically, the management board has cooperated with Foreign Language Group to build

a new TOEIC program to help students to pass TOEIC Although TOEIC - based tests still

aim testing only grammar and reading skills, it can be seen as a considerable change Additionally, before taking graduation exams, UNETI students are required to pass an English level B-certificate exam If students do not pass this exam, they will have to retake

it until they pass This can be seen as a good start though it is the only chance to expose students to communicative environment to learn four skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing which are four compulsory parts in an English level B-certificate test

In brief, for students of economic and technical areas, English is viewed as an obligatory supplementary subject, which has received more and more attention from students due to above mentioned positive changes by the management board

To go deep further into the first year students‟ grammar as entitled in the title of the study,

it is necessary to have a clear view of what freshman are required to master or their required syllabus in the first semester The course books chosen for teaching the first year

student is New Headway Pre-Intermediate (Liz and John, 2003) since it is assumed that

students graduating from high school have known something English before Additionally,

it is also because the course book has benefits over other course books (for specify, see material description 2.2.2) In 14 units in the book, the first-year students are assigned to learn seven first units in the Pre-Intermediate course in the first semester Total time allocation for teaching English Pre-Intermediate is 60 periods with four credits Commonly, each period lasts 45 minutes so the total time for freshman to learn seven units

the participants include 26 repeat students who failed the exam of English are the freshman Randomly, the exam retake class was divided into two groups after being explained that smaller group could benefit students better One group which was asked to learn on Tuesday was secretly planned to be the control group The other group on Thursday was the experimental group receiving focus on form instruction during the exam retake course Each thirteen repeat student group consisted of 7 male and 6 female, aging from 21 to 30 Additionally, the repeat students have different majors for oriented-jobs since they are from different classes of different departments such as accountancy, electricity, informatics and electronics Importantly, the students who were fee paying for their failure in the final exams seemed to be much more motivated to pass the second retake exam

New Headway Pre-intermediate is chosen because it seems to be suitable for students who

graduated from high school completing the three or seven-year program and it has a number of good points First, it is designed to help students use English both accurately and fluently In this book, learners are guided to an understanding of the new language, rather than just have examples of it on the page Second, skills work is integrated and balanced; the students have equal opportunities to practice all the four skills in each lesson

in context Third, the skills work comes from a wide range of authentic sources- newspapers, magazines, biographies, short stories, radio programs, songs- but it is not difficult because it has been simplified and adapted to suit the level so it is interesting Fourth, much attention is paid to practice activities There is a great variety of activities

such as controlled and free, personalized and impersonal ones Besides, the grammatical system of the book is presented properly with clear presentations, self-check exercises in

the Grammar Spot, and detailed explanation in the Grammar Reference, followed by extensive practice activities Last, at the end of the unit, there is Everyday English section,

which provides students with good opportunities to practice both functional language and social situations

This book consists of 14 units and each unit is based around a theme, which is of general interest and has a main structural focus, which is recycled and developed throughout the

unit Each unit is divided into subsections The first section, Starter, is a warmer to the

lesson It is a short student-centered activity and has always has direct relevance to the language to be introduced in the unit The aim is to focus students on the topic or key language point of the unit It also enables the teacher how well the students can use the

language of the unit The second section, Grammar, introduces the main grammar points

at pre-intermediate level This section includes Grammar Spot, which is a mix of

explanations, questions, and self-check task to reinforce the grammar being taught In addition, at the back of the book, there is the grammar reference section that summarizes grammar in each unit, so it is easier for students to remember new grammar items The

third section, Practice provides students with chance to practice orally in contexts that

continues the theme of the unit In this section, key functional language is introduced in a work-related situation, and students are given practical situations in which they can

practice and personalize what they have learnt in the Grammar section Besides, all the

activities in this section of each unit are mainly speaking ones These activities are advised

to be organized in pair or group Vocabulary is the fourth section, which is designed to

provide essential vocabulary It is not only integrated but also developed in its own section New words are presented in a lexical set such as daily life, word formation, hot verbs and

so on The next section is skill development, where students are given the opportunities to

develop all the language skills integratedly such as listening and speaking, reading and speaking In this section, the theme of the unit with a subject relevant to students‟ real lives

is extended Everyday English is the last section which provides input phases, social

expressions and so on in daily real English life Accordingly, students have everyday English input to make conversation or communicate in real life situations

The first-year students are assigned to learn the first seven lessons in New Headway intermediate, which are the required content of the exam retake exam The focus of this

Pre-description on the Grammar section is illustrated with the detailed Pre-description in the following table:

Table 1: Grammar focus in the course book New Headway Pre- Intermediate (Liz

and John Soars, 2003)

1 1 Tenses: present, past, future

2 Questions with and without

question words

Two students: read, listen and complete

the text with provided words

2 1 Present simple tense

2 Present continuous tense

3 Have and have got

People and places: read and complete

the text with provided words

3 1 Past simple tense

2 Past continuous tense

The burglars’ friend: read, listen to

answer and make questions

4 1 Quantity expression

2 Articles

The weekend shop: Read and listen to

complete grammar spot

5 1 Verb patterns1

2 Future intentions

Hopes and ambitions: matching, completing chart and underlining verb patterns

6 1 What‟s it like

2 Comparative and superlative

adjectives

World travel: listen and read to get

information about Todd Bridges

7 1 Present perfect and past simple

2 Tense revision

Famous writers: looking at pictures to

complete sentences with he, she

Looking at the table, it can be said that the course book New Headway Pre- Intermediate

(John and Soars, 2003) uses content-based material like text or conversation to present grammar Afterwards, students are required to use two main skills reading and listening to complete tasks For student grammar practice, many communicative activities in all seven

first lessons are used to require students to talk about themselves in the section “talk about

you” Some mechanical exercises such as error analysis, quiz or tense-gap fill seem to be

not sufficient for students to practice grammatical targets It may be because the course book mainly focuses on communication, which can be proved by the contents of the book From the contents, it can be seen that grammar is one of seven parts including vocabulary, everyday English, reading, speaking, listening and writing In brief, grammar in the course

book New Headway Pre- Intermediate can be seen as communicative grammar, which is

presented in real life situation to enable students to communicate well in real communication

2.3 Research questions and hypotheses

The purpose of this experimental research is to assess the efficacy of focus-on-form instruction for helping the first year students improve their knowledge of English grammar

The research questions formulated for the purpose of this study are:

What factors relating focus-on-form instruction help the first-year learners to develop/ improve their grammar?

Does focus-on-form instruction result in significant improvement in knowledge

of target structure?

How should focus-on-form instruction be applied to improve UNETI students‟ grammar?

The hypotheses of this study aim to test are:

 Hypothesis 1: Focus-on-form instruction would develop the first-year students‟ grammar

 Hypothesis 2: Focus-on-form instruction would bridge the gap between

communicative-based course book and grammar-oriented exams

were their fear when using them to complete grammar exercises as well as communicate well In addition, from my experience as both a teacher and a scorer, I have worked out that present tense is students‟ common mistake, which causes students so many confusing problems which needs to be solved Importantly, present tenses appear in both grammar-based tests at UNETI and communication with high frequency Hence, it is fully motivated

to study two present tenses thoroughly For the thesis limit, two of present tenses will be thoroughly studied

Secondly, using verb tense correctly is an important skill for learners to express their thoughts and meanings in the appropriate syntax Effective use of syntax is important to show different attitudes and express power and identity In addition, verb tenses are tools that English speakers use to express time in their language Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with mood, voice, aspect, and person, which verb forms may express Verb tenses are absolutely necessary to fluency in English For example, for a native speaker, they add validity to his diction, story-telling, and opinions As an English learner, verb tenses are the most important things to master with the aim of achieving fluency in both writing and speaking skills English verb tenses help organize people‟s thoughts and writing Clarity in spoken and written communication permits people entrance to a world where ideas flourish According to Mc Carthy and Carter (2002), communication involves relational aspects and the desire to express oneself politely and indirectly (as opposed to bluntly), often manifests itself in tense forms that are part of the knowledge of correct grammatical construction The range of tense helps individuals to create communication with relational, interpersonal meaning

Thirdly, present tense is the most common and it aids people much to have effective communication Plotnik discusses the effect of tense: every narrative has a base tense, one that moves the action of the communication forward Present tense promotes a feeling or mood of immediacy and the potential for change or flexibility (Plotnik, 2003) Understanding and correctly using the present tense has the potential of significantly increasing not only effective communication of verbal and written messages, but also of correctly and proactively establishing relational aspects of events and situations that is an important part of proactive grammar instruction

In sum, present tenses are so essential for students to master Two present tenses named present continuous and present simple were chosen as the target structure for above reasons The rationale for choosing present simple tense and present continuous tense is both psycholinguistically and pedagogically motivated Using verb tenses in general and using two verb tenses as the target structure in private has positive effect on communication It is because the more correct use of tense an user has, the more precisely

he can express his thoughts and meanings, the more effective his communication will be and the more potential for success he may have in his interpersonal and business communication in his life

2.5 Research design: experimental research

As mentioned above, the problem I have had is non-English major students‟ poor knowledge of grammar Additionally, the problematic gap between communicative course book and grammar-oriented exams creates the mismatch between learning material objectives and test aims Hence, many students who can try to absorb the course book very seriously seem not get good scores for tests and exams Problematically, some students who do not pay attention much to learning from the course book in class but do grammatical exercises in Workbook or some grammatical books tend to get excellent marks in the final exam

To solve the first problem, I really wanted to find out causes of students‟ poor grammar knowledge and seek the solution to the problem as well as improve students‟ grammar mastery

To deal with the second problem, the problematic gap needs bridging by a teaching method mixing communication and grammar Gradually, this way of teaching was found to be called Focus-on-form instruction by well-known methodologists such as Rod Ellis, Long Brown and so on This kind of grammar instruction is firmly supported by Chomsky when

he emphasizes the importance of communication-grammar link when stating indicated that

“grammar is a model (systemic description) of those linguistic abilities of native speakers

of a language which enable them to speak” (cited by Ria Ristibintari, 2009)

Accordingly, to solve both problems, the first hypothesis appeared in my mind that “focus – on –form instruction can not only improve UNETI students‟ grammar but also bridge the

learning-testing gap” To test hypothesis true or false, the experimental research best suits this purpose as “experimentation is also used to test existing theories or new hypotheses in order to support them or disprove them” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment)

Experimental research is important to society because it helps us to improve our everyday life It is also used to investigate the possible cause-effect relationship by using the treatment to see whether the treatment makes difference on the subjects For example, in this experimental research design, the independent variable is indentified as focus-on-form instruction while the dependent variable is the first year students‟ grammar The experimental research tests whether independent variable causes any effect on dependent variables, which is like whether FFI can improve the first year students‟ grammar or not Notably, pre-test and post-test design known as the preferred data collection instrument of experimental method is the kind of assessment which is the same as students‟ final target-final exams Additionally, they get familiar with tests as a popular kind of assessment in Vietnam Accordingly, psychologically and pedagogically, they tend to try their best to use their knowledge with the aim of getting the best scores as possible, so tests are useful to measure students‟ achievement after experimenting with FFI

In brief, for the above reasons, I have decided to select experimental research as my research method Importantly, this method will be thoroughly conducted step by step to get valuable results which can be usefully applied to improve students‟ grammar

2.6 Research procedure

It is said that action research should be seen as flexible and that researchers may have different processes in different situations This flexibility is improved by many different ways of experimental steps found from materials, among which I decided to follow the experimental procedures suggested by James P Key Oklahoma State University (1997) as

follows:

1 Identify and define the problem

2 Formulate hypotheses and deduce their consequences

3 Construct an experimental design that represents all the elements, conditions, and relations of the consequences

3.1 Select sample of subjects

3.2 Group or pair subjects

3.3 Identify and control non experimental factors

3.4 Select or construct, and validate instruments to measure outcomes

3.5 Conduct pilot study

3.6 Determine place, time, and duration of the experiment

4 Conduct the experiment

5 Compile raw data and reduce to usable form

6 Apply an appropriate test of significance

This procedure suits my thesis aims best as the thesis is problem-solving research to improve grammar teaching at UNETI Moreover, the phases are rather clear and specific to follow However, when experimenting I found that the 6th step can be included in the 4thstep to collect data from the tests Accordingly, the adapted experimental research procedure consists of five steps In the following section, I will describe how I went through the five-step procedure in my research

Gradually, each step was applied and conducted in the research as follows:

1 Identify and define the problem

As mentioned above, the problem was identified to be students‟ poor grammar knowledge and the mismatch between communicative-based course book and grammar-oriented exams

2 Formulate hypotheses and deduce their consequences

It was the interrelated link between grammar and communication raised by reliable

methodologists that convinced me to believe in two hypotheses:

Focus-on-form instruction would develop UNETI students‟ grammar Focus-on-form instruction would bridge the gap between communicative-based course book and grammar-oriented exams?

And an anticipated problem formed the third hypothesis:

Students may have some difficulty when learning grammar through on-form instruction?

focus-If after being tested, the two first hypotheses are proved correct, focus-on-form instruction will be widely applied to grammar teaching at UNETI Specifically, if the 2nd hypothesis is true, it can be a great way out to create students succeeding in grammar-based exams; popular exams in Vietnam; through communicative course book or material, which seem

to be unsolved problems met by many teachers, educators, English centers and learners If not, the researcher must find out the reason why

If the third hypothesis is true, the researcher can find ways to eliminate these challenges when applying focus-on-form instruction If it does not cause any difficulties for learners, successfully, it is more persuaded that focus-on-form instruction can be flexibly applied to teaching at UNETI

3 Construct an experimental design that represents all the elements,

conditions, and relations of the consequences

 Select sample of subjects

The exam retake course included 26 repeat first year students, who were randomly chosen

as the sample of subjects as the representatives for the freshman These repeat students at the lowest English levels exhibit the greatest potential for improvement in English grammatical knowledge Significantly, if FFI can improve repeat students with the poorest grammatical knowledge, it will have positive effect on other kinds of students

 Group or pair subjects

The subject sample is divided into two equal groups: a control group is traditionally taught with grammar-translation method; another is an experimental group getting focus-on-form instruction to learn grammar

 Identify and control non experimental factors

Non experimental factors in this study are identified to be random variables and confounding ones Firstly, random variables might include students‟ age, personality type

or majors in economic or technical industries These variables are allowed to vary freely Secondly, confounding variables – a danger to reliability and validity of a research – must

be eliminated Confounding variables which vary systematically with the independent variable may also be a cause of the result In the study, the confounding variable is students‟ attention, which is specifically described in the following example For example,

if those in the focus-on-form group know they are getting a new treatment and therefore

expect to get better while those in the control group know they are not getting any treatment and expect to get worse, the expectations will be a confounding variable If the experimental group does improve, it will not be known that whether it was because of focus-on-form (the independent variable) or because of the participants‟ expectations (a confounding variable)

 Select or construct, and validate instruments to measure outcomes Three data collection instruments including interview, questionnaire and pre-test post-test served as a basis for analysis, which took the form of a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches in accordance with the recently widely held view that “ in the execution of research the qualitative-quantitative distinction is relatively crude” (Nunan,

1993, p5)

Questionnaire was used to gain insight into students‟ attitude towards grammar, form instruction as well as their difficulties learning grammar Pre-test and post-test aim at measuring repeat students‟ improvement in grammar The results of both groups were compared to test whether focus-on-form can improve students‟ grammar mastery better or not Interview provided additional qualitative data for the analysis of the qualitative data

focus-on- Conduct pilot study

The study was piloted with a group of other twelve repeat first year students FFI techniques have been fully tried and tested The interview, questionnaire and tests were delivered to pilot students Accordingly, anything ambiguous, inappropriate and overlapped was checked and redesigned to create data collection instruments of high quality

 Determine place, time, and duration of the experiment

The experimental place was the usual classroom at 353 Tran Hung Dao, Nam Dinh This familiarity could enable students to learn best to pass the retaking exams The familiar place also eliminates students‟ expectation to become experimental group oriented to be better or control group oriented to be worse Accordingly, the experimental place can eliminate above-mentioned confounding variables

In terms of time, the exam retake course lasted 10 weeks; the four first weeks were used to conduct the experiment for the limit of time and material The rest weeks were applied FFI for both groups Afterwards, in the last class meeting, questionnaire and interview were