In this study the timing issue in form-focused instruction (FFI) was investigated from a practical pedagogical perspective by comparing one instructional procedure that integrated FFI into a communicative task and one that provided FFI following a task in a closely sequenced fashion. Learners’ production accuracy on two target forms—situational-the and experiential present perfect—was measured using two pretests and two posttests that imposed pressured and unpressured performance conditions. On situational-the, the only significant mean accuracy gain was recorded by the integrated procedure learners under unpressured test conditions, a gain that was significantly different to that made by the sequenced FFI group. On experiential present perfect, only the gains in production accuracy made by the integrated FFI treatment group were significantly larger than those made by a comparison group. The results challenge Spada and Lightbown’s (2008) assumptions about which type of FFI might be more effective for which type of grammatical language feature by showing that the procedure incorporating integrated FFI was more effective irrespective of language feature type and that the type of knowledge affected depends on target form.
本研究は、教育現場の観点から見た文法指導（FFI）のタイミングについて、コミュニカティブなタスクに組み込んだFFIと、コミュニカティブなタスクの直後に配置した2種類の方法を比較検討したものである。指導の前後に負荷ありと負荷なしのスピーキングテストを実施し、2つの文法項目（定冠詞theと経験の現在完了形）の正確さを測定した。定冠詞の使用については、負荷のないテストにおいて組み込み型指導法のグループにのみスコアの上昇が見られた。経験を表す現在完了においては、組み込み型指導法のスコア上昇のみが対照群と比べて有意に大きかった。本研究の結果から、文法項目の種類にかかわらず、コミュニカティブなタスクの直後に配置した文法指導よりもタスクに組み込んだ文法指導の方が効果的であることが明らかになった。よって、Spada and Lightbown (2008) の、文法項目の特徴により、異なるという仮定は議論の余地があると言える。
