Promoting noticing and SLA: An empirical study of the effects of output and input enhancement on ESL relativization.

摘要

This doctoral research investigates the potentially facilitative effects of internal and external attention-drawing devices, output and visual input enhancement, on the acquisition of English relativization by adult ESL learners. Specifically, the major research questions addressed were (1) whether and how the act of producing output promotes noticing of formal elements in the target language input and affects subsequent learning of those forms and (2) whether such output-induced noticing and learning, if any, would be the same as that effected by visual input enhancement designed to attract learners' attention to problematic form features. These questions were addressed in a controlled experimental study in which the requirement of output and exposure to the enhanced input were systematically varied. A computer-assisted reconstruction/reading task was used as the vehicle of presentation of the target input materials.The major findings are: (1) those engaged in output-input activities outperformed those exposed to the same input for the sole purpose of comprehension in the learning gains (2) those who received visual input enhancement failed to show measurable effect on learning, despite the documented positive impact of the enhancement on the noticing of the target form items in the input (3) in view of the above, no support was found for the hypothesis that the effect of output was comparable to that of input enhancement on noticing and learning.An examination of these results in view of the relevant literature in SLA and cognitive psychology suggests a three-fold advantage of pushed output in learning complex L2 grammatical forms: (a) detection of formal elements in the input (b) integrative processing of the target structure and (c) noticing of the mismatches between one's IL form and the TL input. The lack of any significant impact of visual input enhancement, on the other hand, suggests that the superficial external manipulation of the target form in the input can affect the first factor, but not necessarily the second and third factors. Without denying the essential role of input in SLA, the present study provides theoretical and empirical evidence for a psycholinguistically motivated role of output in second language development.