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Focus-on-Form and Corrective Feedback in Communicative Language Teaching

Effects on Second Language Learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Patsy M. Lightbown  and
Nina Spada
Patsy M. Lightbown
Affiliation:
Concordia University
Nina Spada
Affiliation:
McGill University
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Abstract

The developing oral English of approximately 100 second language learners (four intact classes) was examined in this study. The learners were native speakers of French (aged 10–12 years) who had received a 5-month intensive ESL course in either grade 5 or grade 6 in elementary schools in Quebec. A large corpus of classroom observation data was also analyzed.

Substantial between-class differences were found in the accuracy with which students used such English structures as progressive -ing and adjective–noun order in noun phrases. There was some evidence that these differences (which were not correlated with performance on listening comprehension tests) were due to differences in teachers' form-focused instruction. These findings are discussed in terms of current competing views of the role of form-focused instruction in second language learning.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 429 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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