형태초점접근법의 명시성의 정도가 중학교 영어 학습자의 관계대명사 구문 습득에 미치는 영향

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the effects of three different focus-on-form (FonF) techniques (garden path, dictogloss, and visual input enhancement) on the acquisition of the English relative clauses by Korean middle school students. The three FonF techniques were chosen because they have been widely discussed in the literature as having different degrees of explicitness. It was expected that the degrees of explicitness involved with each of the three teaching techniques would have differential effects on learning. Four intact classes (n = 89) from a middle school located in Jeonbuk Province participated in this study. Each of them was randomly assigned to one of the three teaching conditions and the comparison group and underwent three sessions of treatment. The learning outcomes of the students were measured through various tasks, including a grammaticality judgment task, a sentence completion task, and a correction task. The results showed that the garden path group performed best and the dictogloss group outperformed the visual input enhancement group. Notwithstanding the short treatment sessions, the findings of this study would suggest that more explicit types of FonF techniques would be more effective in the learning of complex constructions like English relative clauses.