Effects of Form-focused Instructions on L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

This study explored the effects of focus-on-form and focus-on-formS on L2 vocabulary acquisition. The researcher compared the four experimental groups: fill-in-blanks with L1 glosses, fill-in-blanks with L2 glosses, non-contrastive FFI, and contrastive FFI. The participants in focus-on-form tasks were asked to read the passage and fill in the eleven gaps with either L1 or L2 glosses from the word lists. Focus-on-formS groups performed the tasks out of context. The non-contrastive group was asked to recognize the meaning of L2 words and complete a sentence using the L2 glosses. Lastly, the contrastive group translated sentences from L2 to L1 and vice versa. The findings revealed that the focus-on-form with L1 glosses, overall and at the higher levels (intermediate-high and above), achieved the highest learning gains, while the focus-on-form with L2 glosses achieved the least. The results with the low-levels (intermediate-low and below) showed that the non-contrastive focus-on-formS group achieved the highest learning gains in the posttest, but the focus-on-form with L1 glosses caught up with the former in the delayed test. The study will discuss the theoretical and pedagogical implications.