The Effects Of Input Enhancement And Output Task On English Grammar Learning Of University Students

Schmidt puts forward the Noticing Hypothesis which states that noticing the target language form contained in the input plays an essential role in SLA. Thus,researchers later begin to investigate how to draw learners’ attention to the target form.They finally find that input enhancement and output are two effective attention-drawing devices. Therefore, considering that many Chinese learners who have been learning English for many years still have many difficulties in their language production especially in the accurate use of grammar rules, the author in this paper attempts to explore the effects of input enhancement and output task on English grammar learning among non-English major college students and the target language form is subject-verb concord. This study tries to answer four questions:(a) Can input enhancement promote the noticing and learning of subject-verb concord?(b) Can output task promote the noticing and learning of subject-verb concord?(c) Whether output task as an internal attention-drawing device can outperform the input enhancement on the noticing and learning of subject-verb concord?(d) If the answers to the above questions are yes, whether the effects can last long?In this study, one hundred and forty-six students in Grade One from Shanghai Normal University participate in the experiment. The experiment lasts for one and a half month from September, 17 to October, 29. The participants are divided into three groups: enhanced input group(IE), output group(OG) and control group(CG). There are three tests, namely, pretest, post-test and delayed post-test. Besides, note-taking and underlining are also employed in the experiment. The major findings are as follows:(a) Input enhancement has a positive effect on promoting the noticing and learning of subject-verb concord.(b) Output task plays a positive role in promoting the noticing and learning of subject-verb concord.(c) Output task and input enhancement almost play an equal role in promoting the noticing of subject-verb concord, but input enhancement performs a little better.Output task performs much better than input enhancement in improving subject-verb concord learning.(d) The effects can not last long.