THE EFFICIENCY OF PRE-EMPTIVE AND REACTIVE TYPE OF FOCUS ON FORM INSTRUCTION ON THE USE OF A TARGET STRUCTURE

The question regarding how to teach structure has played a leading role in teaching field for years. They are on-going debates among linguists on how to teach linguistic forms. Rod Ellis (2003) suggests two questions; 1) Does form-focused instruction work (i.e. do learners learn what they have been taught? 2) What kind of form-focused instruction works best? In this paper, second question is emphasized. The study investigated two groups of pre-intermediate Turkish learners of English in English language context. They were administered with pre-emptive and reactive focus on form (henceforth FFI) instruction while learning a target structure. The data were collected and analysed to decide whether pre-emptive or reactive FFI instruction is more efficient on learning a target structure. The findings revealed that reactive FFI instruction led to superior performance than pre-emptive FFI instruction that can be interpreted as reactive instruction is more efficient. Keywords: Reactive, pre-emptive, form- focused instruction, focus on form