Form-Focused Instruction on Non-English-Majored Undergraduates’ Foreign Language Writing

Abstract

This paper reviewed a one-term experiment on form-focused instruction (FFI) in teaching foreign (English) writing to 162 first-year non-English-majored undergraduate students majored history, economics, computer, agriculture, plant protection, floriculture and veterinary from Yangtze University as participants. Participants in this study consisted of 81 non-English-majored undergraduate students in the control group (CG) and 81 non-English-majored undergraduate students in the treatment group (TG). The participants in CG were taught by the traditional method: grammar-translation teaching method and the participants in TG were taught by the new teaching method of FFI. The results showed that 1) compared with a teacher-dominated approach for CG, FFI in teaching English writing for TG did a better job in enhancing students’ English writing ability; 2) participates in TG hold positive opinions towards FFI in English writing..