| This doctoral research investigates the effects of focus-on-form techniques (enhanced input flood and feedback) and awareness on the acquisition of the English passive by 40 adult ESL learners. Additionally, the impact of two levels of cognitive demand (high and low memory load) on the acquisition process is examined. The research questions were: (a) Does a treatment sequence using implicit focus-on-form techniques lead to noticing of a target form? (b) Does noticing of a target form lead to acquisition of that form? and, finally, (c) What are the effects of the task's cognitive demand on the facilitative effects of implicit focus-on-farm techniques? These general questions were addressed in a controlled study. Retrospective and concurrent think-aloud protocols were used for gathering information on learner-internal noticing.; Results indicated that there was no statistically significant effect for either variable on acquisition or noticing. The focus-on-form groups (+FonF) did not show significantly more form-related concurrent noticing episodes in the input phases. Verbal report data indicated, however, that the output and feedback phases of the experiment resulted in more noticing, regardless of group conditions. The poignant quality of the noticing episodes in the output phases of the tasks seemed to indicate that the quality of noticing was more important than the quantity of noticing that occurred. The cognitive demand variable imposed was found to have little impact on the quantity of both verbal reports and the acquisition of the target form due to the fact that participants in the study used a variety of strategies to lower the tasks' cognitive demand. Targetlike scores on the posttests improved for all groups but the pure control group, but not significantly so. The weighted score on the posttests showed some significant gains: the +FonF (+HCD) group improved from the pre- to the posttest; the +FonF (+HCD) group improved from the post to the delayed posttest; the -FonF (+HCD) group improved from the pre- to the posttest, as did the pure control group. Recommendations for further research on the related issues of language-learning tasks, syntactically complex forms and a range of modalities are made. Implications for teacher development are examined. |
