Abstract:
It cannot be denied that the ultimate aim of L2 teaching/learning is to produce functionally
competent performers who are not at a disadvantage, or short, of grammatical equipments.
However, undue focus on meaning or communicative skills at the cost of forms or
grammatical accuracy results in learners who stop developing at a grammatically inaccurate
level of proficiency. Evidence from several immersion studies justifies the motivation for
formal instruction, i.e. the inclusion of grammar, an issue that constitutes the cornerstone of
the endless debate in L2 teaching methodologies: Should we teach grammar at all? It is our
contention that focus-on-form instruction should be adopted as a mediator between extreme
practices by teaching grammar forms in situations where the focus is primarily on meaning
and communication. The present study suggests a cognitive and focus-on-form approach to
free stabilized interlanguage, escape putative fossilization, and boost L2 acquisition. It seeks
to investigate the differential effect of different types of instruction, namely focus-on-form,
focus-on-meaning and no-instruction. In order for us to determine the role of focus-on-form
instruction in the acquisition of English parallel structures, five research questions are put
forward, where two are most prominent: 1) Does focus-on-form instruction, both preemptive
and reactive, have a differential effect on learners' interlanguage system? 2) Are short-term
gains, if at all, maintained in the long-term? These are translated into working hypotheses
which are roughly summarized as follows: the focus-on-form instructed subjects and the
focus-on-meaning subjects would outperform the uninstructed participants of the control
group; secondly, different types of instructional conditions would have differential effects on
the short-term learning of parallel structures; thirdly, the focus-on-form group would
outperform the focus-on-meaning group in the short-term; and finally, short-term gains would
be maintained in the long-term and higher for the focus-on-form group than for the focus-onmeaning group. Seventy eight (78) third-year LMD university English language learners are
divided into three groups: a focus-on-form group (N=27), a focus-on-meaning group (N=27),
and a control group (N=24). A Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) was used to measure
accuracy of the target parallel forms over the short- and the long-term; therefore, three similar
but not identical tests were administered at three temporal times: a pre-test, an immediate
post-test, and a delayed post-test. The results of the present study show that focus-on-form
instruction had a differential effect in language learning in both the short- and the long-term.
Recommendations for both research and pedagogy are discussed, and a model course of
instruction is suggested.
