An Empirical Study On Noticing Function Of Output In Affecting The Acquisition Of English Adverbial Clause

In1985, a Canadian linguist, Merrill Swain proposed that it is insufficient for the languagelearners to have a good command of target language by means of only relying on the role of input.For successful language learners, they are demanded to produce both input and also output duringthe process of writing and speaking. Therefore, in1986, she elaborated “Comprehensible OutputHypothesis” and introduced the four functions of output in detail:1. the hypothesis testingfunction;2. the noticing/triggering function;3. the fluency function.4. the meta-linguistic function;In the Comprehensible Output Hypothesis, The noticing/triggering function is regarded as the mostimportant one among the four functions by the scholars. At the course of SLA, many researchersnot only at home but also abroad are involved in the experiments of the promotion in the commandof some grammatical forms such as English past hypothetical conditional, passive voice andEnglish attributive clauses during the process of English language learning. Conversely, there areno further empirical researches concerning the acquisition of other grammatical forms. This thesisis mainly about investigating an empirical study on noticing function of output in affecting theacquisition of English adverbial clause as well as some suggestions to college English learners andteachersThe participants of this experiment are60freshmen from DaQing Vocational School. Theywere divided into three groups by the researchers according to the need of the study: one controlgroup(CG) and two experimental groups (EGA and EGB). The three groups receive onequestionnaire, three tests (pretest, posttest I, and posttest II) in the experiment. After the study, theempirical data of the quantitative study include the pretest, posttest I and posttest II which wasemployed SPSS16.0to analyze the results while the data collected from questionnaires arecompared and analyzed in terms of percentage. This paper used new target language form-Englishadverbial clauses to testify the positive role of the noticing function and managed to prove threequestions through the experiment:1. Does noticing function play an effective role in theacquisition about the target form of English adverbial clauses? Compared with non-output, doesoutput facilitate noticing of English adverbial clause?2. Compared with non-output, does outputpromote the acquisition of English adverbial clause?3. Compared with three groups, does theduration of noticing improve the command of the English adverbial clause? The results of thestudy demonstrated that the participants of EGs can perform better than the participants of CG in the noticing and acquisition of the English adverbial clauses and what’s more, the duration ofnoticing does promote the acquisition of the target form on the English adverbial clause?The thesis consists of five chapters: The first chapter presents a brief synopsis of the thesisand mostly provides an introduction concerning the study background, the research purpose aswell as significance, the methodology used in the study and the whole arrangement of the thesis.The literature review is included and introduced in the second chapter. This chapter introduces thetwo important hypotheses: the output hypothesis as well as the theoretical knowledge of thenoticing hypothesis which lay solid theoretical function for the following further empirical study.The third chapter analyzes the experimental study which mainly discusses research purpose andsignificance, the research questions and hypotheses, the participants, target form, testinginstruments, experimental design and procedures, experimental treatment, data scoring andanalysis. Chapter four is the most vital part which collects the results of study and then makesfurther discussion and analysis. Chapter five is the conclusion which includes the researcherelaborates the major findings in the present study and then summarizes the limitations of thecurrent study as well as present the suggestions for the future researches and provides theimplications for college English teaching finally.