The Effects Of Different Enhancement Techniques On The Teaching Of College English Linguistic Forms

In the past two decades, researchers in the field of second language acquisition had carried out extensive research into the effectiveness of input enhancement, learners' processing of input, and their subsequent performance. Some studies with short-term treatments or small samples testified the effectiveness of input enhancement in facilitating learners' intake and acquisition. Inspired by these studies, the present study aims to investigate whether "input enhancement" has a positive effect on improving Chinese college English majors' accurate use of English subject-verb concord with a comparatively long-term treatment and a large sample.The aim of the study is achieved by examining the three questions listed as follows: (1) Does input enhancement have significant effects on improving participants' accurate use of subject-verb concord? (2) Among the three different types of input enhancement techniques adopted in the present study, which one is the most effective in improving participants' accurate use of subject-verb concord? (3) Do the three different types of input enhancement techniques adopted in the present study produce durative effects on improving participants' accurate use of subject-verb concord?The experiment consisted of seven phases, adopting the same experimental procedure, but using different input materials in each phase. The target form selected for the study was English subject-verb concord. 134 participants involved in this study were second-year college English majors randomly selected from four parallel classes in Gansu Lianhe University. One of the four classes was randomly taken as control group and the other three as experimental groups, such as rule-oriented group, enhanced and rule-oriented group and enhanced group. Rule-oriented group received metalinguistic rule explanation and were exposed to regular, unenhanced input; enhanced and rule-oriented group received both metalinguistic rule explanation and enhanced input; enhanced group received enhanced input only, and control group only read the materials. A pretest was conducted to ensure pretreatment equivalence of participants' accurate use of subject-verb concord, and the posttest and retrospective questionnaires were undertaken at the end of the seventh phase by four groups. Additionally, a delayed-posttest was conducted three weeks later.The data were collected from pretest, posttest, delayed-posttest and retrospective questionnaires, and were analyzed with the assistance of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 11.5.The major findings of the present study are: (1) Input enhancement had significant effects on improving participants' accurate use of subject-verb concord. (2) Input enhancement techniques adopted in enhanced and rule-oriented group were the most effective in improving participants' accurate use of subject-verb concord. (3) None of the three different types of input enhancement techniques adopted in the present study produced durative effects on improving participants' accurate use of subject-verb concord. That is to say, three different types of IE techniques adopted in the present study produced short-term effects on acquisition of linguistic forms.The study offers some insights into the teaching of college English linguistic forms. Though the findings may be different if the research is done from other angles, e.g. syntax, lexicology, and coherence, they highlight the direction of the author's further study on input enhancement.