A Study On Application Of Focus On Form To Senior High School English Vocabulary Teaching

According to Ellis(2001),Focus on Form refers to an approach where learners’ attention attracted to linguistic forms as they engage in performance of communicative activity.It aims to facilitate learners’ language fluency,accuracy and complexity.Since it was put forward by linguist Long(1991),it has been widely concerned by scholars both at home and abroad.A large number of scholars and researchers have studied the effectiveness of Focus on Form teaching method in the field of grammar teaching and have achieved fruitful results.However,there are few researches on the application of Focus on Form in vocabulary learning and teaching.Vocabulary is the cornerstone of language,and it is an indispensable part of language learning.As the linguist Wilkins(1972)said,“ Without grammar,people can express very little;and without vocabulary,nothing can be expressed.” Therefore,vocabulary learning is very crucial for language learning.However,in English vocabulary teaching,some teachers pay attention to the form of vocabulary only,providing no context and adopting a mechanical way to teach English vocabulary unilaterally while other teachers purely focus on the meaning of vocabulary.Under this circumstance,it is necessary to find better teaching method in vocabulary teaching that can not only enable students to acquire the form of vocabulary,but also use vocabulary in appropriate context in senior high school.Based on this premise,the study attempts to explore the effects of Focus on Form(FOF)on English vocabulary learning by comparing the traditional Focus on Forms(FOFs)and Focus on Meaning(FOM)teaching method,so as to find a more effective teaching method to improve students’ second language vocabulary acquisition.The author intend to figure out the following three questions in the present study:(1)Do Focus on Form,Focus on Forms,Focus on Meaning have different impacts upon high school English vocabulary acquisition in the immediate test? If yes,is Focus on Form more effective?(2)Does Focus on Form have better influence on students vocabulary retention in the delayed test? If yes,how does it affect?The author conducted a one-month empirical study on 152 students in three parallel classes of senior one in Wan’an County.The experiment was carried out from the perspective of using different vocabulary teaching methods.Three groups of students received different teaching activities randomly: one class was taught vocabulary with Focus on Form,and the second and third classes used the Focus on Meaning and Focus on Forms teaching methods respectively.The experiment investigated the students through vocabulary test and interview,and the data collected during the experiment were processed and analyzed by SPSS16.0.Results of the experiment show:(1)All three groups acquired some vocabulary at different levels in the immediate test,but three different vocabulary teaching methods had different effects on vocabulary acquisition.The effect of Focus on Form was better than Focus on Meaning and Focus on Forms.(2)In the delayed test,the students in the Focus on Form group memorize more vocabulary and have better retention in vocabulary acquisition.Because in the second language vocabulary learning,the Focus on Form group combines FOM and FOFs to keep students’ attention balance between form and meaning to obtain the best vocabulary learning effect.The results of this study provide pedagogical implication for vocabulary learning of senior high school students as well as vocabulary teaching.On the one hand,students can choose more suitable vocabulary learning methods according to their own learning habits and make improvements;on the other hand,teachers can choose more effective methods in vocabulary teaching to teach students vocabulary,improve the efficiency of students’ vocabulary learning and facilitate students to acquire vocabulary better.