A quasi experimental study of form focused instruction at hanoi university of industrial fine arts

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ THỊNH A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF FORM-FOCUSED INSTRUCTION AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRIAL FINE ARTS (Nghiên cứu giả thực nghiệm phương pháp dạy trọng dạng thức ngôn ngữ Trường Đại Học Mỹ Thuật Công Nghiệp Hà Nội) M.A THESIS FIELD: CODE: ENGLISH METHODOLGY 601410 HANOI- 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ THỊNH A QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF FORM-FOCUSED INSTRUCTION AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRIAL FINE ARTS (Nghiên cứu giả thực nghiệm phương pháp dạy trọng dạng thức ngôn ngữ Trường Đại Học Mỹ Thuật Công Nghiệp Hà Nội) M.A THESIS FIELD: CODE: SUPERVISOR: ENGLISH METHODOLGY 601410 NGUYEN THI VUONG, M.A HANOI- 2010 iii TABLE OF CONTENT Page Acknowledgements i Abstract ii Table of content iii List of Abbreviations vi List of figures vii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Rationale for the study 1.3 Aim of the study 1.4 Research question 1.5 Significance of the study 1.6 The scope of the study 1.7 The structure of the study CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Definition of terminologies 2.2.1 Grammatical competence 2.2.2 Form-Focused Instruction (FFI) 2.2.3 Focus-on-forms vs Focus-on-form 2.2.3.1 Focus-on-forms (FoFs) 2.2.3.2 Planned focus on form 2.2.3.3 Incidental focus on form 2.3 Advantages and Disadvantages of FFI 11 2.3.1 The Advantages of FFI 11 2.3.2 The Disadvantages of FFI 12 2.4 The summary 17 CHAPTER THREE: THE STUDY 18 3.1 Introduction 18 3.2 The rationale of using a quasi-experimental method 18 iv 3.2.1 Definition of a quasi-experimental method 18 3.2.2 The rationale of using a quasi-experimental method 18 3.3 The study 19 3.3.1 The subjects 19 3.3.2 Procedures 20 3.3.2.1 Pre-treatment test 20 3.3.2.2 Post-treatment test 20 3.3.2.3 Interview 20 3.3.3 The treatment 21 3.3.3.1 Activities used in the treatment 21 3.3.3.2 Process of the treatment 22 3.4 Results 24 3.4.1 Scoring procedures……………………………………………………………… 24 3.4.2 Results of pre-test and posttest 25 3.4.3 Data from interviews 28 3.5 The findings 30 3.5.1 The answer for hypothesis 30 3.5.2 The findings from the interview 30 3.5.2.1 Students’ perceptions of the differences between FFI and their conventional learning 30 3.5.2.2 Levels of motivating among the students when adopting FFI 31 3.5.2.3 Students’ evaluations towards the FFI method 32 3.6 The summary 32 CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION 34 4.1 Introduction 34 4.2 Summary of the major findings 34 4.3 Conclusion 36 4.4 Recommendation of the application of the FFI method 36 4.5 Limitations and suggestions for future studies 36 REFERENCES 38 v APPENDIX 1A .I APPENDIX 1B IV APPENDIX 2A VIII APPENDIX 2B XV APPENDIX XX vi List of Abbreviations: EFL: English as Foreign Language FFI: Form-Focused Instruction FonFs: Focus-on-Forms FonF: Focus-on-Form L1: Native language L2: Target language N: Number vii List of tables Table 3.1 Students’ mean score in pre-test and post test ……………………… 28 Table 2: Descriptive statistics of the post-treatment test…………… .29 Table 3.3: Results on the five criteria…………………………………………… 31 List of graphs Graph 3.1: Frequency distribution of the Experimental class………………… 29 Graph 3.2: Frequency distribution of the Control class…………………………30 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1.1.Introduction Firstly, this chapter presents the rationale for conducting the study This part then will be followed by the aim of the study, research questions, significance, and the scope of the study Finally, the structure of the study will be presented so that the reader will have an overall look of order of the study 1.2.Rationale for the study Grammar is one of the most controversial issues in teaching a language At first, grammar was taught through a traditional way in which, according to Long and Robinson (1998), discrete points of grammar are presented one at a time Whereas, Fotos (1998) write that what EFL learners really need is a not grammatical feature, but opportunities for communicative language uses Therefore, a meaning-focused approach to language teaching, according to Maley (1986) and Littlewood (1981) that concentrates on language use, appropriateness, fluency, learner-centeredness and integration of language skills (Cited in Gao 2009, p.46), has appeared However Brown (1994:77) suggests that teachers working in the communicative context try to implement “real life” communication in the language classroom in order to help learners develop linguistic fluency not just accuracy As a result, fluency without appropriateness would cause serious misunderstandings in communication (Dai, 2002) Recently there has been a call for an integration of focus on forms and focus on meaning in the second language classroom that is focus on form As for Long and Robinson‟s opinion (1998:23), focus on form often consists of an occasional shift of attention to linguistic code features - by the teacher and/or one or more student - triggered by perceived problems with comprehension or production They argue that focus on form is the third option which attempts to capture the strengths of an analytic approach while dealing with its limitation According to Long this approach to grammar is more effective Long (1991: 45-46) claims that through focus on form, learners will be encouraged to achieve more accuracy in using language Rod Ellis (1994:659) also acknowledges that formal instruction results in increased accuracy and accelerates progress through developmental sequences and its effects are to some extent durable Studies on focus on form, which were conducted in various contexts, showed positive results However, this question has not been adequately studied in Vietnam, especially in the context where English is taught as a sub-subject at the university For all these reasons, I decided to conduct a quasi-experimental study of Form-Focused Instruction in HUIFA This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of focus on form approach in teaching grammar toward students‟ grammar achievements at HUIFA 1.3.Aim of the study This study attempts to examine the effect of form-focused instruction on improving students‟ grammatical competence In order to achieve the above aim, a quasi-experimental method was used in this study The hypothesis to be tested in this study was Form-focused Instruction (FFI) improves students‟ grammatical competence significantly in comparison with the traditional focuson –forms approach (FonFs) 1.4.Research questions 1, To what extent does FFI lead to the improvement of students‟ grammatical competence? 2, Is there any difference in terms of students‟ grammatical competence between FonFs and FFI approach to grammar 1.5.The significance of the study The result of this study will provide empirical information about the effectiveness of FFI on students‟ grammatical competence in the context of English as a sub-subject taught at a Vietnamese university The significance of the study will therefore lie in its contributions to the understanding of how FFI works in an English-as-a-foreign language context 1.6.The scope of the study The study is limited to the examination of the causal relationship between form-focused instruction and students‟ grammatical competence at Hanoi University of Industrial Fine Arts 1.7.The structure of the study The study consists of four chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction Firstly, this chapter presents the rationale for conducting the study This part then will be followed by the aim of the study, research questions, significance, the scope of the study Finally, the structure of the study will be presented so that the reader will have an overall look of order of the study Chapter 2: Literature review This chapter deals with an overview of the literature It starts with the definition of terminologies including grammatical competence and FFI It is then concerned with FonF vs FonFs Next part is about the advantages and disadvantages of FFI This chapter will finish with a summary Chapter 3: The study This chapter presents the research design, research procedures, and the result of the study Firstly, the rationale for using a quasi-experimental design is presented This will be followed by the description of the procedures and the treatment Lastly, the findings will be summarized and discussed Chapter 4: Conclusion This chapter includes the summary of the main findings, the conclusions, the recommendations, and the limitations and the suggestions for future studies Firstly, the summary of the main findings from the treatment is focused on This will be followed by 26 N Mean Range Min Max Control Group 21 5.76 Experimental 21 6.06 Group Table 3.2: Descriptive statistics of the post-treatment test It can be seen from the Table 3.1 and Table 3.2 that the scores of two groups range from to And the difference of mean score between two groups is not statistically significant Mean score of experimental group is 0.3 higher than that of the control group The results were described in the two following diagrams Mean: 5.76 Median: Mode: Num ber of students Score Figure 3.1: Frequency distribution of the Experimental class Mean: 6.09 Median: Mode: Num bers of students Score Figure 3.2: Frequency distribution of the Control class The graphs for both sets of posttest scores are relatively exemplary of normal distributions The fact that the means, median, modes, and midpoints obtained from each set of data have 27 fairly similar values is another indicator of normal distribution The normal distribution of data is a crucial factor for many statistical measures and subsequently is the analysis of the difference between the means of students‟ scores in control class and experimental class As can be seen from the Figure 3.1 and Figure 3.2, although the experimental group achieved a slightly higher mean than the control group, the range of scores of both groups is the same with being the minimal score and the maximal score However, in the control group, the great frequency fell on the score of while only student scored and another scored Regarding the experimental group, the mean is the same as that of the control group, but more students scored and (N=6) and also more students scored and (N=2) Nevertheless, there is not enough evidence to conclude that FFI has positive impact on students‟ improvement of grammatical competence Also, it seems that FFI was a little more effective to students, who scored in the posttest In other words, not all students benefit from FFI This is understandable because of the difference in students‟ learning styles All in all, we can conclude that FFI helps students very little in improving their grammatical competence Therefore, the researcher continued to analyze partial marks that students got for each criterion In the post-treatment test, all of the scores were added per major evaluation criterion in order to obtain the final scores The results on the five major criteria are displayed in the following table: Writing Verb Sentence Conversation Mistake formation formation completion correction Experiment 27 5 No of items 50 10 10 Partial score 0.54 0.83 0.85 0.5 0.5 Group Total score 3.22 Table3.3: Partial marks and total score on the five criteria performance 28 Writing Verb Sentence Conversation Mistake formation formation completion correction Control 22 No of items 50 10 10 Partial score 0.44 0.83 0.85 0.3 0.5 Group Total score performance 2.92 Table 3.4: Partial marks and total score on the five criteria As can be seen from the Table 3.3 and Table 3.4, we see that although the mean score of the experimental group (6.06) is higher than that of the control group (5.76), partial mark for each criterion of two group are almost similar, except for two criteria namely verb formation and mistake correction The total score of experimental group is slightly 0.3 higher than that of control group Therefore, there is not significantly difference in performance between two groups 3.4.3 Data from interviews In order to explore the students‟ opinions of the usefulness of FFI to their grammar learning, the researcher conducted an interview with individual student of experimental group at the end of the course In the interview, students were invited to reflect their ideas about grammatical competence and the new mode of learning grammar by answering questions Students were free to express their views and opinions Each interview took about 10 minutes In general, there exist both positive comments and negative opinions about FFI For the good side, first of all, the majority of students were eager to the new way of learning They expressed a same idea that FFI did bring a more interesting and effective way to learn grammar than the old one Particularly, in the previous time, grammar was taught separately from other skills The traditional teaching of discrete points of grammar in separate lessons made learners feel bored With FFI method, in stead of writing down on notebooks everything teachers said or wrote on the board, learners spent more time on discussing about an interesting topic with their teacher‟s instructions of form As for them, 29 using grammatical items into communicative tasks made it easy to memorize the new knowledge more effectively and less boringly One student said “In the previous time, grammar lessons are often silent and boring We just only listen to the teacher’s presentation and write down in our notebook everything on the board We all feel asleep in English lessons But everything has changed when my teacher taught grammar in a new way We are allowed to speak English in class with interesting topic given by the teacher We sometimes got stuck to find English words to express our ideas, and then we used Vietnamese That is funny and it made us laugh happily Moreover, my teacher also instructed us to use grammatical items to negotiate meanings so we can memorize them easier in a longer term” In contrast, this FFI also suffers from some drawbacks With FFI method, the teacher uses the target language in class to teach grammar Many students complained that they have problem with listening comprehension Their listening skill is limited so they can hardly understand what teacher said Some students are so shy to ask the teacher to repeat what has been said Therefore, they just keep silent during the lessons and were not involved in any activities in class Some other told their teacher to translate into Vietnamese and then continued the given tasks However, translating into Vietnamese also cost much of the teacher‟s time One student with low proficiency of English said: “I almost did not understand what my teacher said I, at first, feel nervous and then started to be worried about my studying in English lesson” Moreover, the limited time of the treatment period affected badly students‟ achievement One student said: “I was interested in this new learning style because it is more interesting However, we had just only weeks to learn grammar under the new method so we found difficult to be familiar with it “ 30 It is implied that students may be resistant to an instructional innovation when it is first introduced Therefore, it is important to familiarize the students with any new instructional strategies and the introduction of innovation should be gradual In addition, different students have different abilities to learn English Therefore, it is necessary for teacher to take care of feasibility of a new method 3.5 Findings The focus of this section is on the answers to the hypothesis and important findings from the interview analysis 3.5.1 Answer for the hypothesis: Form-focused Instruction (FFI) improves students‟ grammatical competence significantly in comparison with the traditional focus-on –forms approach The results from the post-treatment test on the five major criteria showed that experimental class outperformed clearly the control class, especially in the criteria of verb formation and mistake correction However, these are not sufficient empirical evidence to conclude that FFI improves students‟ grammatical competence because the overall impact of FFI on students‟ grammatical competence is not statistically significant Therefore, the researcher can not conclude that Form-focused Instruction (FFI) improves students‟ grammatical competence significantly in comparison with the traditional focus-on –forms approach Apart from testing the effectiveness of the FFI method based on the students‟ improvement of grammatical competence, the study also aims to study the insight, attitude, and evaluations on the part of students towards this new learning method The following aspects have been explored from the interview analysis 3.5.2 The findings from the interview 3.5.2.1 Students’ perceptions of the differences between FFI and their conventional learning 31 Through the interview, the researcher discovered students‟ perceptions of differences between FFI and their conventional learning The difference between FFI and conventional learning is clearly shown by the fact that more than two thirds of the students admitted the major changes in their way of learning grammar Specifically, as for learners, grammar was taught through communicative tasks with instruction of form-focused For the old method, students only received discrete points of grammar in isolation They did not have chance to use grammar in “real-life” communication The over focus on forms made them ignore comprehensible abilities of communication in foreign language Thanks to this instruction, learners know when and how to use a form appropriately in a certain context Besides that, students also received feedback from teacher after finishing the tasks It can be seen that students gained something from the new model of learning more than the existing one This difference led to students‟ awareness that they became far more active and more involved in way of using grammar actively and accurately than ever before Therefore, students‟ perceptions of the differences between FFI and FoFs supports Doughty‟s view that a fundamental feature of focus on form is that at the time when learners‟ attention is focused on a linguistic form, they must already be familiar with the meaning and the appropriate usage of that form If information about meaning and usage is lacking, the attention to form would be considered FoFs 3.5.2.2 Levels of motivating among the students when adopting FFI According to Long‟s view (1997) despite the best efforts even of highly skilled teachers and textbook writers, focus on forms tends to produce boring, with resulting declines in motivation, attention, and student enrolments Everything has changed when the teacher applied the FFI method Many students perceived FFI in this treatment to be a motivating experience thanks to its benefits The interview data showed that they were interested in the new method although their results of post-test were not expected figures However, on answering question “How FFI in this semester helped you overcome any of your difficulties in improving grammatical competence?” most students either weak or mediocre shared the feeling that they are more confident with their knowledge of grammar 32 3.5.2.3 Students’ evaluations towards the FFI method After the treatment period, students gave out their both positive and negative evaluation to the FFI method On the positive side of FFI method, a great number of students agreed on its role in drawing learners‟ attention to form while they are engaged in communicative tasks It helps increase accuracy and accelerates progress developmental sequences and its effects are to some extent durable This method could raise learners‟ awareness of forming a structure 85% of the students in the course revealed that they had to focus on form, or the way of forming structures while doing the task This supports points of some researchers (e.g Ellis, 1999; Long, 2000) that form instruction is most effective when it is focused on raising learners‟ awareness of how a structure is formed, what it means, and how it is used rather than on practicing drills for accuracy They did not make wrong uses of grammatical structures in their use of English as much as they did before Therefore, their English has become more accurate and fluent than before However, as for learners, this method also has two main shortcomings The first is the use of the target language in class which prevented students from well understanding what teacher said It sometimes caused students‟ misunderstanding and cost much time for the teacher to explain Moreover, the treatment was taken place in a limited time so students did not have enough time to get on well with the new learning and teaching style This also affected badly their studying Therefore, with the weak point of FFI, we can totally agree with Poole (2003b) that teachers and students can easily code-switch in order to overcome communicative difficulties or fill communicative gaps 3.6 Summary In summary, this chapter has offered a detailed description of how the project was carried out including the method of data collection, results and data analysis Finally, the major 33 findings from the analysis of results in the experiment and from the interview results has been discussed Chapter 4, the final chapter would summarize the main points discussed in the revision of the literature and repeated the most important findings of the study The conclusion regarding the advantages, disadvantages of the FFI project and limitations of the study would be presented The researcher also offered suggestions for future research related to this study 34 CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION 4.1 Introduction This chapter contains the summary of the main findings, the conclusions, the recommendations, and the limitations and the suggestions for future studies This chapter will start with the summary of the main findings from the treatment This will be followed by the conclusions and recommendation of the study Finally, the limitations and suggestions for future studies will be presented and discussed 4.2 Summary of the major findings After the treatment, the researcher gained some major findings as follows: In the study, the theoretical base of FFI was employed and an attempt was made to indicate how FFI method according to Rod Ellis (2001) could affect the grammar learning process, learning outcome and student motivation at HUIFA A pretest-posttest experimental design was used to study the effects of FFI in improving students‟ grammatical competence Two classes of forty-two students taught by the same teacher were included in the study Research results showed that there was a little difference in students‟ achievement on the post test Students of the experimental group showed a slightly higher result of verb formation and mistake correction after the experimental semester The difference between two groups is not statistically significant, which means that there is not enough empirical evidence to conclude that FFI improves students‟ grammatical competence Along with the experimental research, the study drew on qualitative data from directly interviewing twenty-five students in the experimental class The data revealed that although FFI has some impact on students‟ posttest score, the approach appeared to benefit some of the students only Besides, FFI really motivated English learning among students Learners got become more excited during the treatment Their grammar lessons, therefore, were less boring than before Moreover, the treatment also received constructive evaluations from students which will be of great importance for 35 future applications of FFI method In terms of language used in class, teacher should use both target language and native so that students will be clear what teacher said Regarding length of time for experimental treatment researcher had better spend more time for applications of FFI method There are two implications here First, the effectiveness of FFI may be dependent on the student‟s learning styles In other words, not all students gained positively from FFI Second, the students seemed to find FFI less boring than the traditional approach to grammar, the approach did not make much difference in term of their grammatical competence This may be due to the fact that the treatment was applied in a very short time, which did not allow students have enough time to adapt their learning styles to the new approach to grammar 4.3 Conclusions Although the treatment inevitably contained some negative features, it generally met criteria discussed in the literature review Below are the benefits of FFI into the contemporary English course at HUIFA Firstly, the FFI method activated learning grammar among students Students‟ learning was enhanced and more enjoyable as they were involved in using knowledge of grammar to the tasks Thanks to FFI, they no longer got bored with grammar lessons and felt eager to attend the given activities in class Such ways of doing the tasks limits drawback of traditional way of teaching and learning The FFI method really encouraged students to learn grammar but also facilitate communication and interaction between students This result supports Long‟s view (1997) that despite the best efforts even of highly skilled teachers and textbook writers, FonFs tends to produce boring lessons, with resulting declines in motivation, attention, and student involvement Secondly, FFI helps to draw students‟ attention to form during fulfilling the tasks The findings from interviews support opinions of Ellis and some other researchers that FFI helps draw learners‟ attention to form while they are engaged in communicative activities 36 which is not easy to achieve because learners find it difficult to attend to meaning and form at the same time (Ellis et al., 2001:422) Moreover, it also maintains a balance between the focus on forms and focus on meaning calling on teachers and learners to attend to form when necessary (Long, 1991., & Long and Robinson, 1998) Thirdly, beside strong points of FFI approach to grammar teaching, this method also suffered from one disadvantage in a EFL classroom Firstly, with students at a university in which English is considered a minor subject, the problem in understanding what teacher said often comes from the target language used in class It does prevent learners from perceiving knowledge of any language This fact really supports Alex Poole‟s view (2005) that a linguistic problem with focus on form instruction is the language spoken by English learners and their teachers He has pointed out, in many settings, the students and the teachers often have a common first (or second, or third) language and culture, and thus can easily code-switch in order to overcome communicative difficulties or fill communicative gaps Finally, the short period of time for treatment affect negatively students‟ achievement Thus, it is necessary to give students more time to get familiar with any method, not FFI alone 4.4 Recommendation of the application of the FFI method The findings of this study indicate that there is no method of teaching grammar that benefits all students (Prabhu, 1990) Teachers need to find out the students‟ learning styles before employing any new instructional strategies In addition, the introduction of a new instructional strategy should be gradual so that students can have enough time to familiarize themselves with the intended innovation before gains of innovation can be achieved 4.5 Limitations and suggestions for future studies Although the students who took part in the project benefited from it, there has existed some limitations due to its scope and weaknesses 37 Firstly, the small number of subjects (i.e., forty-two second-year students selected) might have affected the findings and implications of the study The results would have been more persuasive if the research had involved more participants Hence a bigger sample should be used for a more extensive study Secondly, in this study, the focus is on two grammatical items which are the Simple Past and the Past Continuous Tense because these two items normally occur concurrently Hence, any conclusions derived from the findings of the study cannot be the basis to presume the same results for other grammatical items It is recommended that more studies need to be done in order to determine appropriate form-focused activities in which learners' attention can be drawn to identify difficult forms Another limitation of the study is the time factor The whole experiment took about weeks to complete, that is, from the pretest to the posttest Thus, the findings of the study may not reflect the actual effects of the approaches on the students' grammatical competence over a short period of 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Language teaching 30(2): 73-87 Spada, N (1999) How languages are learned Oxford: OUP ...VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ THỊNH A QUASI- EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF FORM- FOCUSED INSTRUCTION AT HANOI. .. fundamental feature of FonF is that at the time when learners‟ attention is focused on a linguistic form, they must already be familiar with the meaning and the appropriate usage of that form If information... experiencing any problems that are form related and if the teacher verbalized a grammatical rule Ellis a al (2002b: 427) state that pre-emptive focus on form can be conversational or didactic in nature