Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education Advance Access originally published online on August 3, 2006
The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2007 12(1):8-24; doi:10.1093/deafed/enl009
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Focus-on-Form Instructional Methods Promote Deaf College Students' Improvement in English Grammar
National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology
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Focus-on-form English teaching methods are designed to facilitate second-language learners' noticing of target language input, where "noticing" is an acquisitional prerequisite for the comprehension, processing, and eventual integration of new grammatical knowledge. While primarily designed for teaching hearing second-language learners, many focus-on-form methods lend themselves to visual presentation. This article reports the results of classroom research on the visually based implementation of focus-on-form methods with deaf college students learning English. Two of 3 groups of deaf students received focus-on-form instruction during a 10-week remedial grammar course; a third control group received grammatical instruction that did not involve focus-on-form methods. The 2 experimental groups exhibited significantly greater improvement in English grammatical knowledge relative to the control group. These results validate the efficacy of visually based focus-on-form English instruction for deaf students of English and set the stage for the continual search for innovative and effective English teaching methodologies.
1 The sequence ... who were from Buffalo is a successfully produced adjective clause (+ADJC) containing a successfully produced past tense form (+PST), were. 2 The discourse context requires a verb reflecting perfect aspect and, in this case, past tense, perfect aspect: we had waited for six hours. The coding system uniquely identifies formations, with no double descriptions. Thus, the combination of present or past tense and perfect aspect represent a PERF formation, irrespective of the tense. 3 The most likely interpretation of the sequence ... the ticket with include for foods, VIPs, hotel, and bus is "... the ticket which included food, VIP [passes?], hotel, and bus." Accordingly, the sequence following the ticket is coded as an unsuccessful adjective clause containing an unsuccessful past tense form. 4 Consistent with the uniqueness principle of the coding system, MOD refers to both the modal verb and the bare form of the main verb with which the modal co-occurs. Because the discourse requires couldn't afford, the formation, can[']t afford is designated –MOD. 5 Although not terribly frequent in the students' essays, sequences like Solve on my trouble vacation diverge somewhat from grammatical English structure. In such cases, the most plausible interpretation was employed in coding. In this case, the verb solve has no subject as required in English finite sentences. Therefore, an underscore was provided to signal a missing element (the sentence subject). Regardless of the structure inferred, this sequence would require a past tense verb, hence, –PST Solve. 1 In keeping with the uniqueness principle of the coding system, did not had in the sequence he did not had any computer, is coded –PST because it is an ill-formed past tense formation despite the fact that it contains the negative not and therefore the auxiliary verb did. 2 The student's production, that he just kicked out, contains the required elements and occurs in an appropriate environment (after told me) to be judged a properly formed that-complement (+THAT). However, within the that-complement, there is a missing required element for a properly formed past tense formation, specifically was or got to create a past tense, passive voice formation: was kicked out or got kicked out. Because passive is not one of the target formations, the relevant target is the missing past tense required in the formation, therefore, the code –PST. 3 In a situation in which the discourse contains recurring past tense forms, get in the sequence that everybody get older and became family is coded –PST rather than –PRS because the surrounding environment makes it clear that the student did not intend to produce the generic present tense form gets. 4 In the case of we agreed for being best friend, syntactically, the complement of agreed here could be an infinitive, to be, or a prepositional phrase beginning with on followed by a gerund (on being). Because an infinitive is more commonly the complement of agree (we agreed to be best friends) and because the student did not produce the preposition on, the error was scored as –INF. Furthermore, we agreed on being best friends has a different connotation than the construction with the infinitive. It should be noted, however, that we agreed on being best friends would have been regarded an acceptable production because this study involved the assessment of grammatical, not stylistic, knowledge. 5 In cases where either of two alternatives is grammatically acceptable, either production is coded as correct. That is, in until we die, die is correctly +PRS. If the student had instead produced until we died, died would have been coded +PST because past tense is also acceptable here following English sequence of tense principles. Correspondence should be sent to Gerald P. Berent, Department of Research and Teacher Education, National Technical Institute for the Deaf, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623-5604 (e-mail: gerald.berent{at}rit.edu).
Received March 27, 2006; revised July 6, 2006; accepted July 9, 2006
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