Can Output Promote Chinese ESL Learners' Noticing And Acquisition Of Linguistic Forms?

Swain's (1995) output hypothesis maintains that output performs three functions, namely, the "noticing/triggering" function, the "hypothesis-testing" function, and the "metalinguistic" function; the noticing function means the activity of producing the target language may prompt second language (L2) learners to recognize their linguistic problems and bring to their attention what they need to discover about the L2, and as a result, acquisition is facilitated. The current study followed Izumi et al. (1999) and Izumi & Bigelow (2000) in the implementation of the two types of output tasks (i.e., the guided essay-writing task and the text-reconstruction task) to investigate whether the two tasks that force learners to produce precise and accurate target language in communicative context could help Chinese learners of English recognize their linguistic problems in their output and prompt them to seek subsequent input with more focused attention and thus lead to the noticing and learning of English past hypothetical conditional. 48 university students took part in the whole experiment. The experimental group (n=24) wrote an essay after reading the writing prompt and reconstructed a passage after they read it. The control group (n=24) did the comprehension task (i.e., Chinese summary recall) with the same materials. The two major findings of the study were: 1) The underlining results did not show the experimental group's greater noticing of the target form than the control group. Yet the subjects' responses to the questionnaires suggested that most subjects of the experimental group noticed not only the form itself, but also the problem they had with the form and the gap between their interlanguage and the target language; the control group, however, noticed only the form per se. It could be possibly concluded that the experimental group experienced more noticing, which might help their final acquisition of the target form. 2) When they started to write the essay or reconstruct the passage a second time, the experimental group incorporated immediately what they had learned from the input; furthermore, they scored higher than the control group on all the tests. The output tasks thus showed superiority over the comprehension tasks and moreover, the role of output had manifested its long-term effect. The major findings in this study lend strong support to Swain's output hypothesis and have some important implications for communicative language teaching.