Children using dictogloss to focus on form

This paper reports on a study investigating children’s attitudes towards dictogloss, a type of focus on form task designed to facilitate learners’ understanding of the target form in a meaning-focused context. The compatibility of this language teaching procedure with interests and motivation of learners, in effect, provides a learner perspective of the effectiveness and usefulness of the task. This study can thus be seen as a preliminary step in determining the feasibility and effectiveness of incorporating focus on form (FonF) instruction into an upper primary ESL classroom. Specifically, the study addressed whether children found dictogloss compatible with their interests, needs and motivation, and whether teachers found dictogloss appropriate in terms of their learnability, teachability and task usefulness. A total of 78 children from three Primary 5 classes in Brunei Darussalam took part in the study, and they were given attitude questionnaires at the end of each lesson. Findings based on the children’s responses show that there existed fluctuations in children’s attitudes to the task during the grammar lessons, thus providing a strong implication that children’s focus, through manipulation of task design and implementation, could be reinforced to process the target feature as they perform the task. The results also suggest that further classroom research is needed to find ways for teachers to adapt the FonF approach to their specific classes.