Noticing Function Of Output And College Students' English Writing

The English teaching objective is to cultivate English application abilities. Among all the abilities, English writing ability is not only an authentic reflection on the learner's English acquisition, but also applied in various exams, job hunting as well as in other occasions practically.Based on the noticing function of Output Hypotheses, the present study attempts to investigate the effect of learner-generated notice on college students'English writing. Swain's (1995) output hypothesis maintains three functions, namely, the"noticing/triggering"function, the"hypothesis-testing"function, and the"metalinguistic"function; the noticing function means the activity of producing the target language may prompt second language (L2) learners to recognize their linguistic problems and bring to their attention what they need to discover about the L2, and as a result, acquisition is facilitated. It is characterized as an attempt to direct the learner's notice to problematic aspects in input to promote their acquisition.In this study, four research questions are explored:(1) What aspects of language do students notice while writing a text on their own?(2) What are the effects of noticing in writing stage and comparison stage on subsequent revisions?(3) Can the students with model essays write better than those without them?(4) What are the students'attitudes toward this writing method?All the subjects are from Grade 2 of Clinical Medicine Department in Weifang Medical College. Among 120 students selected from two classes, one 60 is as experimental group. The other 60 is as control group. The study lasts 16 weeks and mainly focuses on writing tasks, including writing output, comparison, and two revisions. During the whole research procedure every two weeks the students in both groups were required to write an argumentation with 120 words or so according to word prompt. The Experimental Group was trained to apply the stage of writing and noting down the problematic features noticed, of comparing the original draft with one model essay and writing down the features noticed, of revising alone and of delayed individual revising while the Control Group was asked to experience the stage of writing alone, revising alone and delayed individual rewriting. The students in both groups took two tests (pretest, and posttest) on English writing and had one questionnaire during the whole research procedure. And the data was collected and categorized and the analysis was conducted by using SPSS 17.0.The results of this study can be shown in the following aspects:Firstly, during the writing stage and comparison stages, students noticed almost all the lexical features despite the fact that they noticed more features except the solutions to the language troubles in the writing stage, such as grammar and the discourse, which meant that students need words most when writing, at the same time, they paid certain attention to the grammar whose rules were difficult to say in the model essay. Secondly, features of the models that were related to the problems that the participants had noticed through output were incorporated at a higher rate and were also retained longer than unrelated features. Thirdly, through pretest and posttest, the subjects in experimental group wrote better than the control group. Therefore, it may be also said that output produced a constructive dominant effect on learning. Modeling was an effective feedback method which promoted noticing in English writing. Finally, the majority of subjects thought this study offered big help to them.The results indicate an important noticing function of output and the positive effect of Output on language learning. The findings also reveal that spontaneous noticing of linguistic forms can drive learners toward subsequent learning by allowing learners to decide on the linguistic features that they really need.