The effects of textual enhancement and simplified input on L2 comprehension and acquisition of non-meaningful grammatical form

Previous studies on input enhancement have not examined how enhancement impacts L2 learners' acquisition of forms that have no communicative value and how draw learners' attention to form via enhancement might impact how input is processed for meaning. The study set out to investigate how textual enhancement as a form of input enhancement and increasing the comprehensibility of input via input simplification might impact adult L2 French learners' acquisition of the past participle agreement in relative clauses and their comprehension of three texts in which the target forms were embedded. Four groups of second semester learners of French were exposed to one of four conditions: (1) textual enhancement and simplified input; (2) no textual enhancement and simplified input; (3) textual enhancement and no simplified input; and (4) no textual enhancement and no simplified input. Textual enhancement was realized by giving participants three texts to read in which the target forms were typographically manipulated. Simplified input was characterized by simplified versions of the texts. Acquisition was assessed via an error correction task and comprehension was assessed via free recall tasks that measured total idea units recalled and enhanced idea units recalled.; The results for acquisition demonstrated that textual enhancement and simplified input did not help learners acquire the target form. However, the results for comprehension revealed that while textual enhancement had no effect on total idea units in the texts, textual enhancement aided recall of the enhanced information in the texts. Additionally, it was observed that participants who read the simplified versions of the text had higher comprehension recall scores. An important implication of the study is that the type of enhancement used in textual enhancement studies needs to be carefully examined. The question of whether some techniques are more effective at pushing learners to process cued information for content while others may be better suited at drawing attention to form was considered. Additionally, the results of the study raise the question as to whether textual enhancement (as well as other types of focus on form techniques) can help learners make form-meaning connections when there is no meaning for the form to map onto, that is to say, when the form has no communicative value.