Teaching Grammar through Form-Focused Instruction: The Case of Teaching Modal Verbs to Turkish EFL Learners

Abstract

The present study attempted to explore the effectiveness of form-focused-instruction in a context where English is learned as a foreign language. In particular, the purpose of the study was to investigate the effectiveness of the planned focus-on-form instruction in comparison with focus-on-forms in the acquisition of a set of modal verbs. The participants of the study were 8th grade students (n= 37) studying at a middle school in Denizli. The present study adopted a mixed-method research design. The quantitative part involved a pretest, a treatment stage, and a posttest while the qualitative part consisted of written semi-structured interviews. The data obtained from the pretest and post-test were statistically analyzed through SPSS 17.0 with the aim of measuring the effectiveness of the two instructional treatments. As for the qualitative part, interviews were translated into Turkish and the data was subjected to content analysis and thus analyzed through pattern- coding process (Miles & Huberman. 1994) to identify recurrent themes. At the end of the study, it was found that planned focus-on-form instruction was more effective than focus-on-forms instruction in the participants’ learning of target forms. In addition, at the end of the content analysis, it was found that the participants favored planned focus-on-form instruction because the they benefited from guessing the meanings out of the context as it helped them retain the knowledge for a longer period of time. In addition, the participants stated that that their exam scores have been positively affected by planned focus-on-form instruction.

Keywords

• Form-Focused Instruction
• Modal Verbs
• Focus-on-Form
• Focus-on-Forms

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