| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 外國文學所 === 96 === Abstract
The purpose of the study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of communicative grammar teaching (planned focus on form) and traditional grammar teaching (focus on forms) on sixty-four junior high school students’ speaking performance in Changhua County and to discuss the participants’ oral accuracy and fluency after they respectively received these two kinds of teaching methods, planned focus on form and focus on forms. The participants were from two classes and they were seventh grade students. One was the experimental group who received planned focus on form; the other was the control group who was taught with focus on forms. The data collection was from three sources. First, it included the teacher subjects’ responses in the questionnaires and the students’ test results of a pretest. The information of the questionnaire intended to probe the two teachers’ personal background and their teaching experiences. The results of the pretest were to ensure students’ English proficiency was at mixed levels. Secondly, it was classroom observation and in-class videotaping. The classroom observations were three 45-minute class periods and they were videotaped by the researcher who was in the back of the classroom. The classroom observation was to understand the students’ learning performance, the teacher’s instruction and the students and teacher’s interaction in classes. Finally, the students’ scores of test results in the posttest and delayed posttest were gathered and data analysis included statistic quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis. The relative merits of the two teaching methods were assessed through analysis of English oral proficiency in light of the direction terms the student subjects used to answer to the questions in the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest.
The results from comparing the pretest and posttest showed the participants in the control group who received focus on forms instruction had greater oral accuracy than those of the experimental group who were instructed with focus on form method. Furthermore, there was an interesting finding that the participants in the control group also had a better oral fluency than those of the experimental group. It seemed the control group had better oral performance in the immediate posttest. When comparing the posttest and delayed posttest, the researcher found the students in the experimental group had a better delayed effect in oral ability than those of the control group. Thus, it was concluded that the students in the control group gained immediate advantage of performing oral proficiency in the posttest. On the other hand, the students in the experimental group made long-term acquisition gains in oral ability so they performed better in the delayed posttest than those of the control group.
Based on these findings, the researcher confirmed that planned focus on form and focus on forms are both effective for developing students’ oral proficiency. Therefore, it is suggested that when English teachers instruct English grammar to students, they can combine these two teaching methods in class. When teachers combine these two kinds of instruction in their teaching, their students can gain immediate effects from focus on forms and delayed effects from planned focus on form. As long as teachers are willing to challenge themselves by uniting planned focus on form and focus on forms to teach their students, both teachers and students are going to benefit from these two teaching methods now and in the future.
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