The Effect Of Form-focused Instruction And Corrective Feedback On Acquisition Of English Phonemes By Junior High School Students

The methods of teaching English pronunciation in junior high school,are relatively monotonous and boring,mainly focusing on intensive training of individual phonemes,with a little research on pronunciation teaching centered on meaning-or communication;there are significant problems with students’ English pronunciation,which is not beneficial to the cultivation and development of students’ language communication skills.In contrast,Form-focused instruction(FFI)emphasizes teaching activities in a meaningful or communicative environment,and it is to be further demonstrated whether the effect of FFI is more significant when teachers provide students with timely corrective feedback(CF)during the teaching process.To improve English pronunciation teaching in junior high school,this study aims to investigate the effect of FFI with and without CF on junior high school students’ acquisition of English phonemes.The research questions are as follows:(1)What is the effect of FFI on junior high school students’ acquisition of English phonemes?(2)How does CF influence the effect of FFI of English phonemes?First,before conducting FFI instruction,a questionnaire was carried out to investigate which English phonemes are most difficult for junior high school students to acquire.Then,two parallel classes of seventh-grader in a middle school in Leizhou were randomly divided into three groups: the FFI-only group,the FFI+CF group,and the control group.The instructor provided FFI treatment for the FFI-only group,provided not only FFI treatment but also CF for the FFI+CF group,and the control group received no FFI or CF instruction.Acoustic analysis of the pre-and post-test speech of each of the three groups of students was conducted using Praat speech analysis software and combined with human rating.Three hundred speech samples randomly selected from the pre-and post-tests were used as the major analytical material respectively,and the data were analyzed using SPSS software.The main findings are shown below:(1)With respect to the results of the questionnaire,English phonemes [θ] and [e] are the most difficult for students to acquire and the mean is 4.25.The other challenging phonemes are English [r] and [l],and the mean is 4.08 and 4.03.After the instructional teaching targeting these phonemes under meaning-oriented oral training focusing on a phonological form,students in the FFI-only group did not have a significant enhancement in their phonemes acquisition.Thus,it suggested that the effectiveness of FFI in promoting the development of the learners’ pronunciation was unclear.(2)FFI with CF has a significant impact on the learners’ pronunciation enhancement.That is,students in the FFI+ CF group had a significant improvement in their pronunciation.Moreover,under the FFI treatment,the students still need immediate CF to make sure whether or not their output is adequately comprehensible.Therefore,English pronunciation instruction based on a combination of two models of form-focused instruction and corrective feedback is beneficial to promoting the development of learners’ phonological acquisition.This study provides a feasible and effective method for teaching second language pronunciation.In addition,the present research uses a combination of acoustic analysis and human rating to measure the changes in learners’ phonological attributes in the target phonemes more accurately,providing a reliable outcome measurement for future studies of phonological attribute changes.