The Effects Of Input Enhancement And Output Task On Promoting Relative Clauses In Writing

Noticing Hypothesis emphasizes the importance of noticing in Second LanguageAcquisition (SLA). Many studies show that both input enhancement and output taskcan facilitate SLA by promoting noticing. Relative Clauses (RCs) are chosen as targetform in the present study. The RCs can be divided into different sub-categoriesaccording to variation in difficulty hierarchy, and in the PDH hypothesis, the SS/SOtype of RCs is considered more difficult to acquire than the OO/OS type. Threeresearch questions are established in the present study to identify the effects of inputenhancement and output task on promoting RCs of different accessibility.1) Does input enhancement task promote more production of RCs (RCs ingeneral, SS/SO, OO/OS) by Chinese students in English writing?2) Does output task promote more production of RCs (RCs in general, SS/SO,OO/OS) by Chinese students in English writing?3) Does output play a more important role than input enhancement in promotingRCs (RCs in general, SS/SO, OO/OS) by Chinese students in English Writing?In the experiment the input enhancement materials are provided to the controlgroup (CG), while output materials to the treatment group (TG). A pretest, a posttestand a delayed test in the form of essays writing are conducted to compare the relevanteffects. This experiment suggests that the effectiveness of treatments differs accordingto the difficulty hierachy of RCs. The details are as follows:1) It seems that input enhancement plays a positive role in promoting general RCsand simple RCs (OO/OS). However, it may fail to promote difficult RCs (SS/SO).2) It seems that output task performs quite a good job in promoting general RCs,the difficult RCs (SS/SO) and the simple RCs (OO/OS); However the long-timeeffects are not quite desirable in all three cases.3) It seems that output plays a more important role than input enhancement inpromoting general RCs. Output may outperform input in promoting difficult RCs(SS/SO). As for the effectiveness of promoting simple RCs (OO/OS), there is notmuch difference between the two devices.