The Effects Of Isolated And Integrated Form Focused Instruction On Middle School Students’ English Passive Voice Acquisition

Cultivating grammatical competence has always played an essential role in second language teaching,and how to teach grammar more effectively has also been a focus for English teachers and scholars.Form-focused instruction(FFI)refers to the teaching method which is used to explicitly or implicitly attract learners’ attention to language forms in a meaning centered communicative classroom.The related studies have verified that FFI can effectively improve learners’ second language learning and is quite suitable for grammar instruction.In 2008,based on the timing of FFI,Spada and Lightbown divided FFI into two types: isolated FFI and integrated FFI.However,there were relatively few comparative studies on the isolated and integrated FFI in China,and the findings of the studies abroad were inconsistent.Therefore,based on the theories of the Noticing hypothesis,Information Processing Theory,and Interaction Hypothesis,this study compared and analyzed the effects of isolated and integrated FFI on junior high school students’ passive voice acquisition,and intended to answer the three questions: 1)Which form-focused instruction is more effective in improving junior high school students’ achievements in English passive voice acquisition,the isolated FFI or the integrated FFI?2)What are the effects of isolated and integrated FFI on the passive voice acquisition of junior high school students at different proficiency levels? 3)What are junior high school students’ preference,isolated FFI or integrated FFI? 105 grade 9 students from two classes in a junior middle school in Bayannur City were selected as the participants.Class 1,with 54 students,was chosen as an isolated instruction group;while class 5,with 51 students,was chosen as an integrated instruction group.After a 9-week experiment,the data from the questionnaire,pre-test,and post-test were analyzed through SPSS26.0.The results show: 1)Both the isolated and integrated FFI can improve junior high school students’ achievement in passive voice acquisition,and the effect of isolated FFI is better.2)Both the isolated and integrated FFI can enhance high-level and low-level junior high school students’ passive voice acquisition,especially for high-level students,and isolated FFI had advantages over integrated FFI.3)Junior high school students prefer isolated FFI to integrated FFI.This study provides an empirical basis for applying isolated and integrated FFI in junior high school English grammar lessons and some implications for future English grammar instruction.