The Effects Of Text Reconstruction On The Noticing And Acquisition Of Past Hypothetical Conditional By Chinese College English Learners

The study aims to test the noticing function of output, that is, whether producing the target language can make the learners aware of their interlanguage problems and prompt them to notice something relevant they need in the target language. Three research questions are mainly discussed in the present study. They are:1) Compared with the control group, does the experiment group's text reconstruction have positive effects on the noticing of the target language form?2) Compared with the control group, does the experiment group's text reconstruction have positive effects on the acquisition of the target language form?3) Does the input-output activities have positive effects on the experiment group's second output of the target language form?There were two groups of non-English-major students (the experiment group and the control group) in the study, each containing 45 participants. The experiment consisted of two phases, with the same procedures but different input materials. In each phase, both groups first read the input material and were asked to underline the parts they thought important for their subsequent tasks, and after reading the input the EG's task was reconstructing the text they had read and the CG's task was to finish comprehension questions about the text. And the same procedure would be duplicated twice in each phase. After every phase there was a posttest, and a retrospective questionnaire was conducted after the second posttest. Two weeks later, the delayed posttest as well as the interview was carried out.The major findings of the study are as following:1) Text reconstruction has positive effects on the noticing of the target language form. However, the effect is not significant compared with that of reading comprehension task.2) Text Reconstruction has positive effects on the acquisition of the target language form, but the effects are not long-term.3) Input-output activities have positive effects on the output of the target language form. Through the discussion and analysis of the results, three conclusions are gained in the paper: first, owing to individual variation, text reconstruction cannot always have positive effects on the noticing and acquisition of the target language form. Second, the cognitive demands of output tasks have great effect on the noticing and acquisition of the target language form, and text reconstruction brings memory load on the learners. Third, after the reconstruction attempt, teachers can give learners feedback on the success of their reconstruction in terms of content and grammar, for it seems "the optimal intervention point by the teacher" (Izumi,2003). The study aims to test the noticing function of output, that is, whether producing the target language can make the learners aware of their interlanguage problems and prompt them to notice something relevant they need in the target language. Three research questions are mainly discussed in the present study. They are:1) Compared with the control group, does the experiment group's text reconstruction have positive effects on the noticing of the target language form?2) Compared with the control group, does the experiment group's text reconstruction have positive effects on the acquisition of the target language form?3) Does the input-output activities have positive effects on the experiment group's second output of the target language form?There were two groups of non-English-major students (the experiment group and the control group) in the study, each containing 45 participants. The experiment consisted of two phases, with the same procedures but different input materials. In each phase, both groups first read the input material and were asked to underline the parts they thought important for their subsequent tasks, and after reading the input the EG's task was reconstructing the text they had read and the CG's task was to finish comprehension questions about the text. And the same procedure would be duplicated twice in each phase. After every phase there was a posttest, and a retrospective questionnaire was conducted after the second posttest. Two weeks later, the delayed posttest as well as the interview was carried out.The major findings of the study are as follows: 1) Text reconstruction has positive effects on the noticing of the target language form. However, the effect is not significant compared with that of reading comprehension task.2) Text Reconstruction has positive effects on the acquisition of the target language form, but the effects are not long-term.3) Input-output activities have positive effects on the output of the target language form.Through the discussion and analysis of the results, three conclusions are gained in the paper:first, owing to individual variation, text reconstruction cannot always have positive effects on the noticing and acquisition of the target language form. Second, the demands of output tasks have great effect on the noticing and acquisition of the target language form, and text reconstruction brings memory load on the learners. Third, after the reconstruction attempt, teachers can give learners feedback on the success of their reconstruction in terms of content and grammar, for it seems "the optimal intervention point by the teacher" (Izumi,2003).