Chapter 20

THE

EFFECTIVENES

S OF FORM-

FOCUSED

ENGLISH

TEACHING

MATERIAL

Tim Ashwell

Presented by:

Ghasem Faraji

IntroductionEllis(1998) has made a distinction between macro- evaluations of second language education programs and projects and micro-evaluations of particular techniques and activities. He suggests that a teacher- oriented approach to second language materials evaluation will emphasize whether particular activities and techniques appear to ’work’ in the context of particular classroom., a micro-evaluation is reported of the effects that different types of form-focused materials had on groups of learners who used them over a 5-week period. The materials were designed to help learners improve their ability to accurately use four language targets and the effectiveness of the materials was assessed through the use of pre-tests, immediate post-tests and delayed post-tests which required the learners to speak under different conditions.

Evaluation of materialsThe evaluation of language teaching materials is, at its most detailed level, an evaluation of the effectiveness of the types of the activities and exercises the materials embody and of the way they have been operationalized. Essentially we need to know whether the use of the materials has apparently has enabled the learners to learn something and, if learning has occurred, how it manifests itself under different performance conditions. Of course, it is also important to know if the learners enjoyed using the materials and if they found them motivating, but the bottom line is: did the materials appear to help the learners learn something and, if so, what?

The present evaluation looks at form-focused materials. Materials of this kind are intended either to initially fmilirise learners with particular target forms or to help them develop fluent and/or accurate use of these forms in the former case, they often appear in a presentation phase and, in the latter case, in practice and production phases of language lessons, whether as part of the present-practice-produce(ppp) paradigm, or as part of a task-supported approach, or in some other way.

In figure (20.1 )some of the options are listed in terms of the focused, degree of control and made of the operations involved. This is only illustrative; other operations, such as translation, can also be performed as a type of practise and other types of task exist(e.g language awarenss tasks) exist.

320 form-focused materials

The particular form-focused materials which are evaluated in this report are gap-fill materials, materials which separate study of form from meaning-focused practice in typical ‘ focus of form’ way. The use of gap-fill as a pedagogical tool is an adaptation of cloze procedure which was originally developed by Taylor(1953) as a way to gauge the readability of texts. The term cloze is coined from the gestalt notion of ‘closure’. In the realm of language testing, this approach quickly attracted attention as a way measure reading comprehension and general language proficiency and the range of ‘ reduced redundancy tests’ is spawned continues to be investigated.(e.g chapelle 2003).

321 Gap-fill exercises Gap- fill is a highly versatile teaching technique,

but is perhaps most often associated with teaching reading skills. Because gaps are normally introduced into connected text, gap-fill is a ready way to teach how texts cohere or to test learners understanding of cohesion. It is also a way to sensitize students to choices in vocabulary and, more ambitiously, can, for example, be used in a language-based approach to literature( Isac, 2002 ). Gap- fill is not only confined to written texts, however gaps can be made in an aural text and learners can be required to supply the missing words either orally or in writing.

Rye(1982) and Soudek and Soudek(1983) describe some of the main procedural contrasts of gap-fill exercises. These are presented in figure( 20.2.)

Since 1980, interest has tended to focus on aural cloze in connection with the teaching of listening comprehension, on written cloze in connection with vocabulary learning, and on the issue of individual versus group completion of cloze excercises.

El-Koumy (1997) found that aural cloze was more effective than a standard listening comprehension approach in an Egyptian high school EFL context, while Hasson(1983) working with L1 kindergarten children, found there was no significant difference between an aural cloze group and standard listening comprehension group in terms of improvement in vocabulary repetition and listening comprehension.

In a clinical context Bellon-Harn et al. (2004) and Bradshaw(1996) showed that when used in classes for kindergarten children with language and phonological impairment, aural cloze can help to enhance the semantic complexity and phonological accuracy of subject utterances.

Several study provide evidence for the effectiveness of cloze exercises in assisting vocabulary learning..

1> Folse(2006) compared the use of three types of exercise with ESL students at american universities, but was only able to establish that three fill-in-the-blank exercises were more effective that one for vocabulary retention, no that cloze was superior to writing original sentences condition.

2>Laufer and Osimo(1991) however, show that words practice in second-hand cloze procedure which require students to fill in the target items in a summary version of a studied text were siginificantly better remembered than words practiced in a translation.

3> Lee(2008) investigated the effectiveness of a rationale cloze procedure which adult ESL learners and found not only that gains for receptive vocabulary learning were significant, but also that gains for productive vocabulary use were significant. In addition, compositions showed that learners were able to extend meanings to the new context.

4>Akobson(1990) studied the issue of individual versus group completion of cloze exercices with non ESL university students in the united states and found that nearly all the subjects scored higher when they completed a cloze passage in a group, rather than individually.

5>Khodabakhshi(1991) performed a replication of the Jacobson study with community college ESL students in the us and found the same thing. No evidence was found that the group activity subsequently led to better individual performance.

In summary, recent studies have shown that aural gap-fill may help improve listening comprehension and my help particular types of learners to improve the semantic complexity and phonological accuracy of their speech; written-gap fill exercises appear to assist vocabulary learning ; in group or pair completion of gap-fill exercises appears to produce more accurate performance than individual completion. The one recent study to look specifically at the potential of the gap-fill for form-focused instruction found that regular gap-fill dictation exercises followed by group completion of passages brought about accuracy gains on stressed grammatical morphemes which significantly different from the performance of a control group.

The evidence provided by the Storch(1999) and Morris and Trembly(2002) studies indicates the potential for gap-fill in the area of form-focused instruction.

The effectiveness of two types of form focused English teaching materials was investigated to see how they might contribute to the accuracy of learner performance under different conditions. One type of material, gap-fill, contained gap-fill passages in which the target forms were omitted(rational cloze).

The other type of material, ‘Rules’ presented target form rules and provided practice in identifying errors. All instruction, explanations and answer keys were written in the learners L1, japanese.

An example of gap-fill material is shown in figure 20.3 In the example in figure 20.3, it will be noted that an element

of the ‘garden path’ technique was sometimes employed so that learners were deliberately led into a trap for the last gap-fill item.(e.g. The dynamite).

An example of the Rules material is shown in figures (20.4 and 20.5.) in the first part, the grammatical rules which govern the use of the target from were stated and numerous examples and counter examples of target form use were provided.

In the second part called APLLYING THE RULES’, learners were engaged in error detection practice using full forms of the dialogues mentioned above, between an imaginary pair of students completing a communication gap activity.

After they had completed the worksheet, learners collected and answer key and marked their own work. These answer keys contained grammatical terminology and constantly referred learners back to the rules which had been explained in the materials. At the end of the Gap-fill and Rules worksheets, learners answered three reflection questions and then handed in their work.