Effects of Implicit and Explicit Focus on Form on EFL Learners' Anaphor Resolution Performance in Reading

Abstract

Learner attention and the implicitness/explicitness of the relation between anaphor and its antecedent are known to be crucial in anaphor resolution performance. This reflects the rationale of focus on form in language teaching, applied implicitly or explicitly to direct learners' attention to specific grammatical form. The present study thus examined effects of implicit and explicit focus on form on L2 learners' anaphor resolution performance in reading and the relationship among focus on form, anaphors, and reading comprehension, thereby helping to explicate the role of focus on form in L2 learners' coherence construction in reading literacy and how their attention should be best directed to the targeted form. One hundred and two Taiwan EFL learners underwent four different treatments, including textual enhancement and explicit rule conditions. Participants' responses were compared with respect to (a) their ability to identify correct English anaphor relations and (b) their reading comprehension degree. The results revealed that implicit, rather than explicit focus on form aided EFL learners' anaphor resolution performance. Moreover, learners' attentional resources for meaning and form processing were not competing, but may have been mutually transferable. These findings are discussed in light of the characteristics of anaphors, the effect of focus on form, and learners' attentional resources with implications.