An analysis of form-focused instruction in the ESL classroom a case study of Ga West municipality.

Abstract

This study aimed at examining how Ghanaian high school English language teachers implement FFI in their teaching practice and as well as how it impacts on their students’ language acquisition. A qualitative textual analysis design was adopted to analyze lesson recordings and focus group discussions from 15 teachers and 862 Form 3 students in three public senior high schools in the Ga West Municipality. The results showed that teachers utilized diverse implicit and explicit FFI techniques including recasts, repetition, elicitation, explicit correction and input-flooding. With this, it found that usage of these techniques was predominantly intuitive rather than planned applications of specific methods. The results also revealed that the FFI episodes focused on lexical/morphological, morphosyntactic, and phonological forms in addition to semantic and pragmatic forms. This suggests that teachers make real-time decisions to address errors or difficulties related to vocabulary and pronunciation; representative of broader intuitive FFI behaviour. Lastly, students reported perceiving positive effects on learning outcomes from FFI techniques, especially on linguistic accuracy. The study also revealed potential drawbacks of form-focused instruction (FFI) techniques. Students felt it discouraged risk-taking and participation, leading to peer mockery. Rapid instruction pace also made it difficult to process and recall target forms, indicating potential ineffectiveness. These results have valuable practical implications for teacher development and optimizing language policy to curriculum implementation in Ghana. The recommendations therefore emphasize teacher education on both reactive and preemptive FFI techniques to consciously embed within lessons to maximize accuracy gains without sacrificing communication.