Monitoring and grammatical morpheme accuracy in the English composition of Japanese university students.

摘要

A qualitative investigation of the cognitive learning strategy of monitoring surface-level grammatical form in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) composition was undertaken with 14 fourth year Japanese university students. Using think-aloud protocol analysis, eight types of concurrent monitoring were identified and described.;Chi-square analysis showed two of eight strategies, reiteration and editing, were used in a significantly different way by students designated less-error-prone (LEP) on a pre-test, compared with students designated more-error-prone (MEP).;When asked to re-read EFL compositions after one week to identify and correct grammatical morpheme errors by retrospective monitoring, there was no significant difference between LEP and MEP subjects.;After six weeks of 'focus-on-grammatical form' training, chi-square analysis showed that there was no significant difference between concurrent monitoring of grammatical form in EFL composition between LEP and MEP subjects, collectively, in a treatment group. Grouping, however, had the effect of masking individual performances, which showed clear gains for some subjects.;Pearson Product Moment Correlation analysis showed that there was a significant difference in pre- and post-test monitoring between a treatment group (n = 14) which received focus-on-form treatment, and a control group (n = 8) which did not. Treatment subjects who had initially not been making maximum use of the monitor improved considerably, whereas those who had initially been monitoring effectively did not.;Findings of note are that the LEP subjects monitor grammatical form in a different way than do MEP subjects when writing EFL composition, and that this difference is qualitative. Second, focus-on-form training improved the performance of all MEP subjects in a treatment group compared with a control group which did not receive the treatment. Third, improvement was noted for all MEP treatment subjects, but not for all LEP treatment subjects. This may at least be partly because focus-on-form training helped MEP subjects make improved use of the monitor.;Form-focused extended writing tasks and individual retrospective reports on the grammaticality of EFL compositions, while not effective for LEP subjects who are already using the monitor effectively, can help MEP subjects improve grammatical production accuracy in EFL composition, perhaps due to improved use of the monitor.