The Impact of Focus on Form Instruction on Second Language Vocabulary and Grammar Learning

Abstract

The teaching of vocabulary and grammar has long been an area of dispute in the field of second language acquisition (Brown, 2001). This study investigated the effect of focus on form instruction on vocabulary learning through the medium of visually enhanced reading texts. Sixty four Intermediate EFL learners were assigned to two experimental groups including a vocabulary and grammar group. After taking a pretest based on the enhanced forms, the learners received ten reading texts with visually enhanced lexical items for the vocabulary group and grammatical structures for the grammar group. In order to investigate the effect of visual enhancement of forms on participants’ vocabulary learning, they took a posttest based on the enhanced forms. Paired sample t-test and ANOVA were used for the analysis of the data gathered from the learners’ performance on the pretest and the posttest. The results revealed positive effects of visual enhancement of forms on learning vocabulary and grammar. This research can provide L2 teachers and syllabus designers with useful information about the effectiveness of visual input enhancement as a technique for vocabulary and grammar learning.