An Empirical Study Of Noticing Funtion In Language Output

Noticing function of output,also called "noticing/triggering" function, proposed by Canadian linguist Merrill Swain(1985)in her Comprehensible Output Hypothesis,refers to that the activity of producing the target language may prompt second language(L2)learners to recognize their linguistic problems and may trigger cognitive processes which may generate linguistic knowledge that is new for the learner,or that consolidates their existing knowledge.Based on Merrill Swain's Output Hypothesis,this study investigates the noticing function of output,that is,whether the output tasks can help English learners recognize their linguistic problems in their output and prompt them to seek subsequent input with more focused attention and thus lead to the noticing and acquisition of the target form.This thesis adopts a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods and the two research questions addressed in this study are:1)Does output task promote learners' noticing of the target form(English past hypothetical conditional)? 2)Does output task facilitate the learning of the target form ?The subjects were the sixty-four freshmen of English majors in Guangxi Education University.On the basis of the same input material,the experimental group(n=32)accomplished a written and an oral reconstruction of the story, while the control group(n=32)accomplished the comprehension task.Both groups took part in the pretest,posttest and delayed posttest.SPSS(Statistic Package of Social Science)was employed to process the data collected.The research data consisted of the statistic analysis of the results of the pretest,post test,delayed posttest and output task and comprehension task,as well as the qualitative analysis of the questionnaire.The four major findings of the study are:1)Both the output task and the comprehension task promote significantly the noticing of the target grammatical form for the EG and the CG from the first input to the second input.However, greater noticing triggered by the output task than by the comprehension task is not statistically confirmed;2)Immediate incorporation of the target form into the EG's subsequent production indicates the EG's cognitive move from semantic processing to syntactic processing prompted by the output task;3) Both the output task and the comprehension task facilitate the acquisition of the target form,but the superiority of the output task over the comprehension task in facilitating the acquisition of the target form is not confirmed;4)The cumulative practice of the productive use of the target form by the EG also fails to confirm the superior role of the output task over the comprehension task in enhancing accuracy in the current study.The major findings in this study provide only partial support for Swain's CO Hypothesis.