An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of FOF And FOFs On Junior High School Students’ Acquisition Of The Number Category Of English Nouns

Long(1988,1991)divides the Form-focused Instruction(FFI)into two subclasses,the Focus on Form(FOF)and the Focus on Forms(FOFs).He held the view that FOF happens in foreign language teaching when the teacher diverts the students’ attention from language meaning to language form,and this kind of diversion is caused by understanding or production problems(Long,1988).This kind of instruction could be incidental or accidental.FOFs refers to the pure form-focused instruction.The FFI is in opposition to the Focus on Meaning(FOM).FOM is a pure meaningfocused instruction.The studies about FFI and FOM are rich since they have been hot topics of English teaching studies for a long time(cg.,Spada & Lightbown,1993;Spada,1997;Doughty & Valera,1998;Long & Robinson,1998;Sheen,2006;Borg,S & A.Burns,2008;D’Amico,2013;Valeo & Spada,2016,etc.).The studies about the comparison of the effects of FOF and FOFs on grammar learning are abundant,but there is a long way to reach a convincing conclusion on which one is better.This study focuses on the impact that FOF and FOFs have on junior high school students’ English grammar learning by taking the number category of English nouns as the target form,and tries to answer the following three research questions:(1)What are the effects of FOF and FOFs on junior high school students’ acquisition of the receptive knowledge of the number category of English nouns?(2)What are the effects of FOF and FOFs on junior high school students’ acquisition of the productive knowledge of the number category of English nouns?(3)What are the effects of FOF and FOFs on junior high school students’ attitudes towards English grammar learning?The research subjects are 31 junior high school students in grade two that come from a tutorial school in Ning Xiang County,Changsha City.They are divided into two groups,the FOF Group that is composed of 15 students,and the FOFs Group that is composed of 16 students.All of them are from two public junior high schools in Ning Xiang County.The teacher comes from a private junior high school in Ning Xiang County.She is a full-time English teacher,who has 8 years’ teaching experience.Moreover,she received instruction about FFI theories and related teaching methods before the experiment.The target grammar forms are singular and plural forms of English nouns.The specific teaching content is chosen in reference to the junior high school English textbooks(People’s Education Press version)for grade seven and grade eight students as well as to the English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011).The experiment lasts for four weeks,and the research questions are investigated by using a pre-test,a post-test,a delayed post-test,and a questionnaire.The three test papers and the questionnaire were not applied until their reliability and validity had been tested to be qualified.The final data is processed and analysed with Excel and SPSS 24.Independent Samples T Test and Paired Samples T Test are used to compare and analyse the data.The research results reveal that FOF and FOFs both lead to significant outcome in the acquisition of the receptive and productive knowledge of the number category of English nouns,but the FOF group produces significantly larger progress in the acquisition of the productive knowledge of the target forms.Besides,the FOF group promotes its confidence and interest in learning grammar much more than the FOFs group does.In addition,the FOF group attaches more importance to meaning,tasks,as well as social and emotional learning strategies,while the FOFs group pays more attention to grammar rules.