reactive and preemptive focus on form vs. focus on forms instruction: iranian efl junior high school learners’ vocabulary knowledge

This study attempts to investigate the impact of focus on form versus focus on forms on the knowledge of vocabulary among efl iranian junior high school learners. to this end, 110 students of shiraz university high school in iran participated, and 60 students were selected based on their performance on a piloted opt test. moreover, a teacher-made vocabulary test was implemented to examine the participants’ vocabulary knowledge as a pre-test. the 60 learners thus were divided into three groups, one control group that was instructed through focus on forms, and each of the experimental groups was taught vocabulary through one of the two forms of focus on form, namely, preemptive and reactive. at the end of the study, the participants in the three groups were given a vocabulary post-test. the design of this study was quantitative. anova and an independent t-test were used to test the null hypothesis. the results of the study revealed the fact that experimental groups significantly outperformed the control group on the vocabulary posttest. the results showed a significant difference between the effect of focus on form in contrast with the focus on forms on the one hand, and with the reactive group outperforming the preemptive group in vocabulary knowledge on the other hand.