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Eurosla 11, Paderborn, 26-29 September. Re-evaluating Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Focus on Form Research. Danijela Trenkic & Mike Sharwood Smith Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. Background: Focus on Form research. the principle aim
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Eurosla 11, Paderborn, 26-29 September Re-evaluating Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Focus on Form Research Danijela Trenkic & Mike Sharwood Smith Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
Background: Focus on Form research • the principle aim • to investigate whether focusing learners’ attention to formal aspects of language in communicative context can (in some cases) promote SLA. • theoretical underpinnings • the noticing hypothesis (Schmidt 1990): only what has been noticed will be learned • goals of research: • pedagogical • theoretical
Typical design of FonF studies • Classroom studies • typically, two or more classrooms of FL/SL learners at the same (or similar) proficiency level are pretested, and then exposed to a different instructional treatment over a period of time.
Their improvement on a post-test is then compared Control Group no FonF treatments Post-test Pre-test Experimental Group receives some sort of FonF treatment
Typical findings and generalisations • Learners who receive FonF treatment perform better on the post-test • FonF - an effective means of promoting noticing • noticing = the key factor of SLA • FonF should be included in language teaching
Problems with FonF research design, findings and generalisations • Theoretical problems: • how do you define noticing? • Schmidt (1990): noticing/understanding distinction • the distinction is scalar, rather than categorical • what is it that a learner has to notice? • how do you measure noticing?
Methodological problems • A whole plethora of uncontrollable variables involved • impossible to interpret the results confidently (you are not sure why something worked, and even more importantly, why something did not work) • impossible to compare studies • impossible to draw generalisations
Major variables in FonF studies • The choice of forms • learners’ proficiency levels • the size and nature of groups • the length of treatment • the number of post-tests • the choice of testing materials • the level of explicitness
The choice of forms • Not all linguistic features are equally amenable to focus on form (cf. Williams and Evans 1998) • the results obtained on one form are no guarantee that the same treatments would work equally well for another form
Learners’ proficiency levels • What work for learners at a certain level of proficiency may not work for learners at another level
The size and nature of groups • Groups not usually big enough for reliable statistical analysis and conclusions (+ the intergroup differences in proficiency, motivation, etc. can be considerable). • ‘since the sample sizes were fairly small and the data were not normally distributed…’ (Doughty and Varela 1998:129) • BUT ‘the effects of [FonF treatment] are clearly interpretable from our results…’ (ibid.) • ‘This sample is too small to provide convincing quantitative evidence…’ (Williams and Evans 1998:151) • BUT ‘[the results] point to the fact that focus on form is indeed useful and should be integrated into communicative curricula.’ (ibid.)
The length of treatment • A few days/several weeks/whole semesters • ‘Effects for instruction of any kind may be, and probably almost are, gradual and cumulative rather than instantaneous and categorical…’ (Long and Robinson 1998:40) • results are affected by the length of treatments
The number of post-tests • There is a reverse side to the gradual accumulation of the effect of instruction • FonF groups often improve their performance on the immediate post-test, but on (sufficiently) delayed post-tests, this improvement decreases, or even disappears altogether. • White (1991) - found positive effects for a FonF instruction on the 5 week post-test, but not on the post-test administered a year later. • The last post-test rarely exceeds 5 weeks • BUT ‘instruction that appropriately incorporates form-focused treatments into communication-oriented language teaching can have lasting positive effect on L2 acquisition’ (Muranoi 2000:661)
The choice of testing materials • Testing materials come in a variety of forms • oral and written reports on science experiments (Doughty and Varela 1998), short constrained narratives based on several pictures (Williams and Evans 1998, Muranoi 2000), more or less constrained sentence-completion tasks (ibid.), different varieties of grammaticality judgement tasks (ibid.), description of a short film-scene (Muranoi 2000), etc. • different testing materials yield somewhat different results when comparing the results, no guarantee that like is being compared with like • the central problem: what are the testing materials testing?
The level of explicitness of FonF treatment • ‘it has not been clear exactly what it means to draw a learner’s attention to form or how this is to be accomplished.’ (Williams and Evans 1998:139) • Accomplished in many ways: from the most implicit ones (e.g. the flood of positive evidence), to the most explicit ones (e.g. stating a ‘rule’)
The level of explicitness • Original proposal: FonF should occur incidentally and be fairly implicit, so as not to distract learners from their communicative goal (cf. Long 1991). • ‘a quintessential element of the theoretical construct of focus on form is its dual requirement that the focus must occur in conjunction with - but must not interrupt - communicative interaction.’ (Doughty and Varela 1998:114) • more explicit procedures may cause stress and anxiety, and so preclude fluency. This is because they do not ‘add attention to form to a primarily communicative task… [but rather] depart from an already communicative goal in order to discuss a linguistic features’ (ibid.)
The levels of explicitness • The general trend emerging from FonF studies employing a whole range of FonF techniques seems to be that the more explicit the treatment, the more marked the gain on the post-test.
Some examples • Williams and Evans (1998): considered English participial adjectives • found that ESL learners who received a flood of positive evidence, plus explicit instruction, plus feedback, significantly outperformed the group which only received a flood of positive evidence, which in turn, outperformed but not significantly, the control group which did not undergo any FonF treatment. • Muranoi (2000): considered English articles • found that Japanese EFL learners show much better results in using E articles after receiving an implicit interaction enhancement treatment, but even better when the treatment is supported by explicit formal instruction.
Result: a split in the ‘theory’ of FonF research • Long and Doughty - still advocate exclusively implicit techniques • Lightbown - argues for ‘a role for “grammatical instruction” that is separate from communicative activities, and is yet integrated in the lesson as a whole.’ (1998:194) • DeKeyser - advocates explicit instruction at first, and believes that declarative knowledge acquired through explicit FonF instruction can eventually become fully automated (1998:47). Communicative interaction is vital for the process of proceduralising declarative knowledge.
Failing on the pedagogical aim • Due to a great number of uncontrollable variables in research, all teachers can be told is: yes, the results show that focusing your students’ attention to form may work, but you have to work out what will work for YOUR students. • Not exactly helpful or revealing
Failing on the theoretical aim • Not much has been revealed about the process of SLA. • Since it is not properly defined what noticing is or how it is to be measured the hypothesis is not falsifiable
Failing on the theoretical aim • Further, findings from FonF research show that: • the more explicit the instruction, the more marked the effect on a post-test; • effects are not preserved in spontaneous production (cf. the choice of testing materials above), or on sufficiently delayed post-tests; • overgeneralised uses of the treated form are a regular by-product of FonF research. • These are characteristics of meta-linguistic learning/knowledge!
Implications of these findings • FonF treatments, irrespective of their level of explicitness, actually manipulate meta-linguistic knowledge, that is knowledge about language, rather than knowledge of language (cf. Truscott 1998). • Similarly, meta-linguistic knowledge is what FonF research testing materials test. • The only safe conclusion: noticing does promote learning, but of meta-linguistic type. It does not seem to promote learning OF language (and we believe there are good theoretical reasons why it doesn’t)
The future of FonF research? • More research of the same type? • OR: defining a viable model of SLA with a clear set of testable predictions? • We would advocate the second choice. • The most theoretically grounded and methodologically worked-out line of research within the FonF framework so far, has been that of DeKeyser (1998), in Anderson’s ACT* framework. The idea is to see whether declarative knowledge, acquired through FonF instruction, can be proceduralised ‘by engaging in target behaviour […] while temporarily leaning on declarative crutches’ (1998:49)
The future of FonF classroom practice • We believe that there is a place for FonF instruction and feedback in language classroom, despite the fact that it produces meta-linguistic knowledge. • Learners may have very limited exposure to the TL (especially FL learners): they may learn in huge groups, a few hours a week, and be taught by a non-native speaker of that language there may not be enough input to develop knowledge of language. • Learners have practical goals - e.g. to pass the exam, get a job, etc., and these goals can be achieved by developing meta-linguistic knowledge (it is actually more than likely that meta-linguistic knowledge is what is going to be tested by the testing materials). • There is a possibility that it can ultimately influence ‘knowledge of language’ - a question to be theoretically and empirically addressed by future FonF research.