A Study On The Effects Of Input Enhancement And Output In Facilitating The Noticing And Acquisition Of Hypothetical Conditional Clause

In recent years, researchers conducted immense amounts of research and posed apparent question concerning the approach to draw learner’s attention as in pedagogically oriented second language acquisition. Their ultimate purpose is to facilitate the acquisition of linguistic forms.It is commonly believed that two pedagogical approaches primarily arouse researchers’ interest, that is, input enhancement and output. Researchers elaborate the empirical treatments and apply these pedagogical approaches to investigate whether approaches can facilitate learners’ attention and then notice the target linguistic forms when involved in the input. The definition of noticing in the current research is based on the theory of Schmidt. Schmidt argued that “noticing is availability for verbal report.” and noticing in his view asks for “focal awareness and attention.”Additionally, in the current research, noticing and attention have used interchangeably. They both involved in the same cognitive process of learners. The participants in the current research are English learners form Shitai High school in Anhui Province.The statistic tool for the data analysis in SPSS.The purpose of the thesis is exploring whether input enhancement and output in separate or combined can facilitate learners’ noticing and acquisition of target linguistic rule in senior middle school.The thesis contained seven chapters, chapter one gave a brief introduction.of the thesis Chapter two and three severs as an overview of theories related to the current research. Such as the theory of noticing, theories related to input enhancement and output. Apart from theoretical overviews, this part included empirical research in the relevant fields. The thesis analyzed their strength and weakness, then points out issues to be resolved. Chapter four and five introduce the research design and methodology at length.The thesis gave account of the conditions and procedures of the current research in detail. Chapter six show the findings of the current research and attempted to demonstrate the original hypothetical questions. Chapter seven summarizes the principle findings andindicates the limitations of the current research and gave suggestions for the sake of further exploration.There are two issues in the current research to be studied:a) Participants in+IE+O group whether performed better than participants in +IE group in noticing and acquisition of the hypothesis conditional clause; b) Participants in +IE+O group whether performed better than participants in +O group in noticing and acquisition of the hypothesis conditional clause.111 fresh students of high middle school took part in the research who were divided into 4 empirical groups: +IE-O group; +IE+O group;-IE+O group and-IE-O group. The first two were enhanced groups(nonoutput group) while the others were output groups(unenhanced groups). All participants were exposure of text materials and were asked to take notes for further tasks except the-IE-O group who only take note but not any tasks. Output groups were asked to reconstruct the input material according to their notes taken before. Enhanced group needed to answer the comprehension questions in accordance with the notes taken before. The experimental process mentioned above repeated again in each treatment phase for contracting the two production of two stags. What’s more, the input material in output group and enhanced groups were a bit different in the form but not in contents. The target form in input material of enhanced group was underlined and showed in boldface.As mentioned above, all participants were asked to take notes when exposure of the text passage and performed tasks for determining the noticing effects of input enhancement and output. In other words, the thesis explored the effects of input enhancement and output by means of analyzing all participants’ feedback, such as their notes, reconstruction and retrospective questionnaires. In belief, the author analyzed participants’ notes and production in six treatment phases and retrospective questionnaires for examining the noticing issue associated with research questions.Participants had a immediate postest exactly when they finished the sixth treatment phase and a delayed posttest one week after the treatment phases. Therefore, the acquisition issue was examined in analyzing the participants’ scores in postests.The empirical findings in current research are listed below:a)Input enhancement were effective in facilitating leaners’ noticing the enhanced input material as the note scores of enhanced groups and output groups showed the obvious diversity. In addition, The research found that input enhancement was unable to improve participants’ further processing and acquisition of target linguistic form.b)The effects of output on noticing had evident in current research’s findings but this kind of noticing was unable to trigger the acquisition of the target linguistic form.c)As the analyzed data showed that participants in +IE+O group were better than other groups in testing the noticing of the hypothetical conditional clause, the method of combining the input enhancement and output were obviously superior to individual function of two pedagogical approaches in separate with regard to facilitating learners’ noticing of the target forms. Moreover, two pedagogical approaches combined had effect on facilitating learners’ acquisition of the target linguistic form as well.