Explicit and Implicit Types of Planned Focus-on-Form: Learning of Active and Passive Forms of Simple and Continuous Past Tenses in the EFL Context

This study examined the immediate and delayed effects of explicit and implicit planned focus-on-form on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ learning of active and passive forms of simple and continuous past tenses. Two intact elementary classes were assigned to implicit and explicit focus-on-form groups. A timed grammaticality judgment test containing the target forms was developed as pretest, and immediate and delayed posttests, but with different order of items. After the pretest, the implicit focus-on-form group received four-session instruction through input flood and enhancement on four reading texts, each rich in one target form. For four sessions, the explicit focus-on-form group also performed indirect consciousness-raising tasks on the same reading passages. Both groups were then given a written picture description task involving the use the target forms. They were directed to describe the situation by writing down sentences. Then the immediate posttest, and four weeks later the delayed posttest were administered to the participants. After their assumptions had been checked, two 1-way analyses of covariance of immediate and delayed posttests showed that the explicit focus-on-form group outperformed implicit focus-on-form group. This encourages the EFL teachers to rely more on explicit focus-on-form instruction which is more beneficial in the EFL context in the long run.

Keywords:

consciousness-raising , explicit focus-on-form , implicit focus-on-form , input enhancement , input flood , planned focus-on-form