The Effect Of Output And Spontaneous Focus On Form On Second Language Acquisition

There is now a general consensus among applied linguists that noticing plays an important role in language acquisition. One important aspect of research into noticing has been on output, which serves an important function in promoting noticing of linguistic forms, according to the 'Output Hypothesis' proposed by Swain. In the process of noticing linguistic forms, linguistic forms initiated by learners are more likely to be incorporated, recalled and acquired. This study was conducted in an attempt to find out the role of output in promoting noticing, its effect on subsequent learning and the nature of spontaneous focus on form in the process. In the experiment, a writing task involving 60 subjects was designed, consisting of written output, comparison and two revisions, with both qualitative and quantitative approaches employed. The experiment investigated what non-English major students noticed as they wrote an argumentation and as they compared their original draft to two models, and how such noticing influenced their two revisions.The results suggest that the subjects noticed their respective linguistic problems while composing an argumentation, found solutions in the models and incorporated most of them in subsequent revisions. Most of what learners noticed was lexical items. Those features related to problems noticed in composing were incorporated and retained at a higher rate than those unrelated. The results indicate an important noticing function of output and the positive effect of output on learning. The findings also reveal that spontaneous noticing of linguistic forms can drive learners toward subsequent learning by allowing learners to decide on the linguistic features that they really need. Besides, proficiency level affects the performance of the subjects. Higher proficiency learners noticed more features than less proficient learners in comparison and incorporated more in revision, especially in delayed revision. These findings yield important implications for college English teaching.