| Swain (1985, 1993, 1995) argued that the process of producing language serves L2 learning by promoting automaticity (Anderson, 1982, 1983, 1992; Cheng, 1985; Logan, 1988, 1992; McLaughlin, 1990) and encouraging syntactic processing (Bock, 1990, 1995; Garrett, 1980; Wiese, 1984). Output also creates opportunities for learners to receive feedback about the comprehensibility of their utterances from their interlocutors (Gass, 1988, 1997; Long, 1996; Pica, 1994; Swain, 1993; Swain & Lapkin, 1995). Producing modified output in response to feedback may encourage learners to direct focused attention to specific production processes, thereby stimulating the development of connections in memory (Bock, 1995; Bock & Levelt, 1994; de Bot, 1996; Levelt, 1989). The results of descriptive studies (Linnell, 1995; Lyster & Ranta, 1997; Oliver, 1995, 2000; Pica, 1988; Pica, Holliday, Lewis, & Morgenthaler, 1989; Van den Branden, 1997) have indicated that learners produce modified output in response to feedback from their interlocutors. However, empirical studies to date (Ellis & He, 1999; Mackey, 1995, 1997; Nobuyoshi & Ellis, 1993; Silver, 1999) have not established conclusively whether the production of modified output facilitates L2 learning. The current study explored the relationship between the production of modified output and Thai L1 EFL learners' (N = 84) development of questions and past tense verb forms. The learners carried out a series of communicative tasks with five native English speakers according to five treatment conditions that provided different output and feedback opportunities. The learners were classified as modifiers or non-modifiers based on their production of modified output involving the target forms during the treatment tasks. Learning was assessed through pretest-posttest performance on both oral production tasks and grammaticality judgment tests. The results indicated that learners who produced modified output involving the target forms were more likely to develop than learners who did not produce modified output. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the potential role of implicit learning in L2 learning. |
