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Table 1 - Group Statistics | |||||
|
episode |
N |
Mean |
Std. Deviation |
Std. Error Mean |
art |
game |
72 |
.68 |
.869 |
.102 |
setup |
69 |
.07 |
.312 |
.038 | |
agr |
game |
72 |
.3472 |
.47943 |
.05650 |
setup |
69 |
.0580 |
.23540 |
.02834 | |
The almost 10 times more the right use of articles (68% out of 72 utterances) appears in game than in setup (7% out of 69 utterances). The verb agreement shows a less powerful effect than the article uses, but there is still a big difference between the game (35% out of 72) and the setup (6% out of 69) .
Lovely! You know, in a way, this is just as beautiful as cherry blossoms!
When you have lovely cherry blossoms, though, you don't just rush past them. You take your son by his hand and you wander a little, pointing out the really gorgeous bits and exclaiming over them
When you have lovely data like this, you should take your reader by the hand and do the same thing. For example, notice that the N numbers are VERY SIMILAR. The means are VERY DIFFERENT. The standard deviaiton of one is MUCH BIGGER than the other (why?). Is the difference between the means BIGGER THAN or SMALLER THAN the standard deviations? What about the standard error of the mean?
The number of cases (in this case, utterances by children, not by the teacher) are very similar. This means that you are comparing like with like! You are comparing apples and apples, not apples and oranges. Good!
The means are very different. This means that the kids are doing things very differently in one context than in the other. Or are they? They might be behaving WILDLY, doing it right one minute and wrong the next.
Only the standard deviation can really tell us. The standard deviation will tell us the AVERAGE DISTANCE from the mean. If it's very large, the kids are behaving WILDLY, and if it's larger than the difference between the two means, then the chances that your result is pointless is pretty high.
Finally, there's always a difference between what you got and what you might get if you did this sort of thing an INFINITE number of times. This difference is called the standard error, and the computer can tell us what it is.
Take a look at the standard error. Is it big or small? Is it bigger or smaller than the difference between the means? How SAFE is your result?
Well, in order to be REALLY SURE, we need a new set of tests. The first test is called Levene's test, and it's a test to make sure that the variances are EQUAL, that is, that the curves of results are both "bell-shaped". If they ARE equal, that is, if the two curves are normal, healthy, bell-shaped curves, then we can go ahead and use a simple t-test (that's the top row). But if they are not, we have to use a somewhat different test, that does NOT assume that the two curves are normally distributed (that's the bottom row).
Table 2 - Independent Samples Test | ||||||||||
|
|
Levene's Test for Equality of Variances |
t-test for Equality of Means | |||||||
|
|
|
|
95% Confidence Interval of the Difference | ||||||
|
|
F |
Sig. |
t |
df |
Sig. (2-tailed) |
Mean Difference |
Std. Error Difference |
Lower |
Upper |
art |
Equal variances assumed |
155.486 |
.000 |
5.481 |
139 |
.000 |
.608 |
.111 |
.389 |
.827 |
Equal variances not assumed |
|
|
5.572 |
89.728 |
.000 |
.608 |
.109 |
.391 |
.825 | |
agr |
Equal variances assumed |
129.767 |
.000 |
4.516 |
139 |
.000 |
.28925 |
.06404 |
.16263 |
.41588 |
Equal variances not assumed |
|
|
4.576 |
104.322 |
.000 |
.28925 |
.06321 |
.16391 |
.41459 | |
* A low significance value for the t-test (p<.000) indicates that there is a significant difference between the two group means.
You can see that Levene's test says that the two curves are probably NOT normal. This is not surprising, really; remember we saw that one of them was MUCH lower than the other. So we have to read the BOTTOM line.
This result gives us two possible answers to the question. One is that there was focus on form in order to get points and the other is that the game format allowed children to initiate. To solve this problem, we need to look at the data carefully.
Good. But before we look at the transcripts and see whether the kids are just using articles to get points and not thinking about the concept of the article or whether they are thinking about how to make sentences correctly without teacher models, we might go back for just a moment to the distinction you made above between PSEUDOCONCEPTUAL use of a model (copying it without understanding it) and CONCEPTUAL use of the model (intelligent imitation, really, a kind of re-creation of the model by the child).
You have made a distinction between focus on form in order to get points on the one hand and initiating on the other. Which one involves use of the FORM of the article? Which one involves use of the FUNCTION of the article?
[Transcript] Game
T: Team red again.
S: light ray bends in the water.
T: sorry. Team yellow, all together
S: The moon beam bends in the water.
T: ask them
S: Why?
S: The moon beam.
T: The moon beam?
S: BEEEEEE
JW: The moon beam bends in the water.
The students are playing game to win by connect four squares so they keep trying to make a sentence with 2 characters in their mind before initiating it. While the game goes on, the students notice how to get the point and easily copy other’s right answers. However, they keep saying nouns without articles and wrong verb agreements. They repeat the same mistakes for a long time and finally one team get a point and the others follow the way and copy it. They do not focus on form at all. (They even rejected the teacher’s help!) This shows that sometimes they use the abstract concepts.
Remember that it is possible to speak without thinking.
It seems the students have the concept externally but they have only pseudo concepts of the article and verb agreement.
Good. But what if the children ask "WHY?" they lose the point?
This also does not support the game activity is more form focused activity. Rather than that, the main reason of high portion of grammatical right uses is that the game provides more opportunities to initiate to students than the setup activity.
I think "focus on form" is really a much more GENERAL concept than that. For example, when the children say "BEEEEEEEE" isn't this focus on form?
[Transcrip4]Setup
T: OK. We have to put some, what? Remember that?
TW: water.
T: No,no,no,no.
T: Last time we had to put something in the square.
T: Remember that?
T: Last time, A monk, a pig and a monkey here and influenza..here.
T: We had to put something.
TW: ah. Make a sentence.
T: Make a sentence with?
S: verbs
As the transcript4 shows that the teacher’s dominated initiations cause less right uses of articles and verb agreements. So it is hard to say focus on form in Setup episode either.
I think you are looking for RECASTS. But that's not what focus on form at the level of the EPISODE means. Focus on form at the level of the EPISODE means "BEEEEEEE".
[Transcript5] Setup
T: verbs. Right?
T: But, we learned about lights in Korean science class.
T: We learned about the characteristics.
T: What was that? 빛은?
S: 직진..
S: go straight
T: Go straight and?
S: turn left.
S: turn right.
We see many complexes instead concepts here. The students automatically say “turn left” and “turn right” after “Go straight”. It shows also they easily make chain complexes.
This explains that focus-on form instructions doesn’t work very well for children. It’s because of not the way of teaching style(game etc.) but the students cannot build the abstract concept yet. They tend to focus on meaning more than the form especially in whole class setting. They accepted the words by those functions first and then apply them again. Purely form-focused learning might cause pretend learning results. Namely, they just build complexes instead concepts of grammar. However, as Vygotsky points out, the students will go into the ZPD with teacher’s proper help through learning.
Remember that the actual teaching GOAL here is functional; it's active use of the article, not passive understanding.