Researching Language Output And Repetition In Second Language Acquisition

With the proposal of Krashen's Monitor Model in late 1970's, more and more second language acquisition researchers and L2 teachers believe in the theory of Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, holding that comprehensible input is the only factor leading to successful L2 learning.Nevertheless, after more than ten years' research and teaching practice, SLA researchers find that it is not sufficient to obtain a high level of language proficiency only by receiving comprehensible input. In the middle of 1980's, some researchers began to investigate the effects of output on SLA and shifted their attention to the value and importance of L2 learners' production of the target language. Among them, Swain's study is the most influential. Parallel to Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, Swain (1985, 1993, 1995, 1998) proposed the"0utput Hypothesis"which claims that producing language serves second language acquisition in several ways. That is, it has several functions: 1. the noticing-triggering function. 2. the hypothesis-testing function. 3. the metalinguistic function , etc.The thesis aims to find out whether production tasks promote language performance of the learner. Specifically, four questions are addressed in this study:1. What are the present situations of language output for college students?2. What's the relationship among the learners'output attitude, output ability, output confidence, output practice, and CET-3?3. Is there any significant difference in language output between high-score group and low-score group?4. Do Poster carousel tasks lead to gains in fluency, accuracy and complexity of learner language?The present study used a combination of one questionnaire and one experiment of study the output tasks to explore the role of output. The subjects for the questionnaire were 97 sophomores of Chinese Traditional Medicine majors enrolled in Jiangxi Chinese Traditional Medicine College. The participants of the experiment were 12 third-year students of English majors in Science and Technology College attached to Jiangxi Normal University. The questionnaire investigated the relationship among the learner's output attitude, output ability, output confidence and output practice. The experiment investigated whether the poster carousel tasks (a kind of repetition output task) promote the acquisition of language in three aspects: fluency, accuracy and complexity.The result of the questionnaire shows that Learners'output situation is not so optimistic; Output attitude, output confidence, output practice and output ability exist high correlations and play an important role in the output process; High-scoring Group will perform better than low-scoring Group in terms of output attitude, output ability, output confidence and output ability.The experiment investigated the role of output in promoting learners'performance. 12 students in experiment were asked to fulfill the poster carousal tasks.The findings of the experiment demonstrated that language output Poster carousel tasks lead to greater gains in fluency, accuracy, and complexity. Statistic techniques such as descriptive statistics and t-test were used to compare and analyze the data. Since output and repetition play a crucial role in language acquisition, it is recommended that language instruction should be output-oriented instead of comprehension-oriented.