The Effects Of Revision On Learners' Noticing Of The Present Unreal Conditional In English Writing

Revision has been proved to facilitate EFL learners'overall writing quality in previous research. No studies, however, have ever explored the effects of revision on a focused linguistic form in writing process. Although there have been some studies on the noticing function of Swain's (1995) Output Hypothesis, few of them have looked at the impact of revision on learners'noticing of a target linguistic form in their writing performance. The current study aimed to fill this gap and endeavored to address four research questions: 1) Does revision improve learners'noticing on the target form of the present unreal conditional in writing? 2) Does feedback plus revision improve learners'noticing on the target form in writing? 3) Does feedback improve learners'noticing on the target form in writing? 4) Which kind of treatments (revision, feedback plus revision, or feedback) will exert the greatest influence on learners'enhanced noticing of the given linguistic form?Grounded on relevant predictions of the Output Hypothesis as well as related studies on revision undertook home and abroad, the research was designed. 150 subjects were selected from three intact classes of non-English-major sophomores of Chongqing University based on their performance in a grammar test. The selected subjects were then divided into three groups to complete the writings on two given topics. First, the subjects were asked to write with the target form according to the given directions (Writing Task 1). After presented with a model essay reading, they were required to perform the succeeding task under one of the three treatment schemes: a) revising their writings without any feedback (the Revision group); b) revising their writings with underlining feedback (the Feedback plus Revision group); and c) getting the underlining feedback without revision (the Feedback group). Finally they were required to write with the target form on a second topic (Writing Task 2).Software SPSS 12.0 was employed to analyze the data. Results indicated that the Revision group made significant progress on noticing the target linguistic form from Writing Task 1 to Revising Task, and so did the Feedback plus Revision group from Writing Task 1 to Revising Task and from Writing Task 1 to Writing Task 2. However, both the Revision group and the Feedback group showed no significant difference between their gains of the target form in Writing Task 1 and Writing Task 2. Besides, the Feedback plus Revision group performed significantly better than the Revision group and the Feedback group in Writing Task 2. Therefore, this study lent some support to the valuable role of revision (i.e., modified output) in noticing linguistic forms in writing, which deserves special consideration in foreign language instruction.