Abstract

This quasi-experimental classroom-based study compared the effectiveness of explicit rule-based teaching and textual input enhancement on a linguistic feature known to be problematic for francophone learners of English as a second language (i.e. third person singular possessive determiners his / her ). Over a four-week period, 4 experimental classes of secondary one francophone learners of English were exposed to form-focused instruction in one of the following conditions. The enhancement group (E) students were exposed to texts in which the target features of the study were typographically enhanced. The participants in the rule (R) group were given an explicit explanation of the rule and exposed to the same materials without typographical enhancement. Students in the rule+enhancement (R+) condition were exposed to both of the above-mentioned conditions (i.e. explicit rule explanation and typographical enhancement of the target feature). Finally, the control (C) group was simply exposed to the materials without rule explanation or typographical enhancement. A pretest, immediate, delayed and a long-term delayed posttest design was used for the purpose of this study. Three tasks were employed: a cloze task, a grammaticality judgment task, and a picture elicitation task. The tendency on all tests and all testing occasions showed that R+ > R > E > C. Showing that the combination of rule presentation coupled with textual input enhancement was most beneficial.