Effects of interaction enhancement on restructuring of interlanguage grammar: A cognitive approach to foreign language instruction

This study examines the impacts of an instructional technique--termed interaction enhancement--on the restructuring of second language (L2) learners' interlanguage systems. Interaction enhancement is a treatment which guides L2 learners to focus on form by providing interactional modifications (e.g., requests for repetition, recasts) which attach 'flags' to incorrect forms (input enhancement) and lead the learners to produce modified output (output enhancement), all within an interactive problem-solving task (i.e., strategic interaction). Based on recent findings on cognitive approaches to L2 acquisition, the present researcher predicts that interaction enhancement would facilitate L2 learners' restructuring of interlanguage grammar because this instruction activates operating principles which guide restructuring. Two types of interaction enhancement were developed in this research: one is interaction enhancement plus formal debriefing (IEF); and the other is interaction enhancement plus meaning-focused debriefing (IEM).; The influences of the two types of interaction enhancement on the acquisition of the English article system were compared with the effects of non-enhanced interaction. In a quasi-experimental study involving 91 Japanese L1 learners of English, three different types of instruction (IEF, IEM, Control) were given to three intact class groups over three weeks, and their progress in the use of English articles was measured with a pretest, and two post-tests, each consisting of four elicitation tasks. The major findings are: (1) interaction enhancement (both the IEF and IEM treatments) had immediate and long-term positive effects on L2 learning of English articles; (2) the IEF treatment had greater impacts on the restructuring of the article system than the IEM treatment; (3) interaction enhancement targeting on the more discoursally marked indefinite article had a concomitant positive effect on the acquisition of the less marked definite article, which was not the direct target of the instruction. The results of the present study are consistent with the claim that L2 instruction in which form-focused treatments are integrated into meaning-oriented interactive tasks in a timely fashion facilitates the restructuring of interlanguage grammar.