The impact of proactive and reactive focus on form in multimodal settings on EFL learners' comprehension and production of modal auxiliaries

The major objective of this mixed methods research, which considered elements of both quantitative and qualitative research approaches, was to examine the effect of two different types of focus on form instruction, namely proactive and reactive across multimodal vs. traditional input settings on Iranian EFL learners' comprehension and production of modal auxiliaries. The participants of the study were 75 EFL high school students at elementary level making three classes each including 25 subjects. Each of the three classes mentioned took part in a pretest including both comprehension and production items. The posttest which was the parallel form of the pretest with minor changes was then administered to the three groups and the results were analyzed by conducting one-way-analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), which revealed a significant difference among the three groups. The proactive group outperformed the reactive and control groups both in comprehension and production of modal auxiliaries. Regarding the qualitative section of the study, which was accomplished through an interview, the majority of the students highly favored the power point presentations, teachers' explanations, and video clips in order of priority. In terms of the students' overall attitudes towards the instruction they were exposed to, the proactive and the reactive groups indicated more satisfaction than the control group.