Abstract
This longitudinal study mainly attempted to investigate the effectiveness of one type of Focus on Form (FonF) language task (i.e. dictogloss) on female Translation university students' grammatical competence. In general, since second language learners experience difficulties with grammatical tenses, these dictogloss tasks (which were developed by Wajnryb (1990) and preformed either with pairs or small groups) were utilized to find out whether their application lead to better performance on grammar tests, particularly in regard to verb tense accuracy. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of using the dictogloss task procedure on female Translation university students enrolled in Grammar (1) at the College of Languages and Translation (COLT), King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh. The study also aimed to survey participants' attitudes and perceptions toward the application of dictogloss tasks. The researcher applied a quasi-experimental design model and survey research. The findings of the study demonstrated that in general, there was no significant statistical difference in verb-tense performance between the three groups' weekly test scores that were immediately administered after presenting dictogloss tasks, but most students, in both experimental groups, expressed satisfaction with the dictogloss task as a whole. It is recommended that future researchers investigate whether and to what extent FonF tasks, such as the dictogloss, are effective for the different proficiency levels for which they are intended to appropriately generalize the findings to other contexts and/or language skills, and identify how instruction and reinforcement can be best designed to promote second language learning.