The effects of various combinations of form-focused instruction techniques on the acquisition of English articles by second language learners of English

Abstract

The current study investigated the extent to which second language (L2) learners of English benefitted from various combinations of form-focused instruction (FFI) techniques on the acquisition of English articles. Forty-six participants were randomly assigned to four conditions: input enhancement only ( n = 12); input enhancement and metalinguistic explanations ( n = 11); input enhancement, metalinguistic explanations, and practice ( n = 11); and a control condition ( n = 12). They each received six hours of online instruction on English articles according to their condition. The participants’ knowledge of articles was measured by four tasks (i.e. grammaticality judgment task, metalinguistic knowledge task, elicited imitation task, and picture-description task) in a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest. Results showed that the group receiving input enhancement and metalinguistic explanations exhibited clear and durable gains in the metalinguistic knowledge task. Furthermore, a subset of participants who benefitted the most from the instructional treatment revealed two common factors: a first language (L1) without an article system and a high rate of engagement during the online instruction. The findings suggest that metalinguistic explanations clearly contribute to explicit knowledge of articles and that learners’ L1 backgrounds may affect the extent to which FFI on English articles benefits them. The present study contributes meaningfully to the current understanding of the effects of FFI as well as the L2 acquisition of English articles.