Effects Of Textual Enhancement And Topic Familiarity On Chinese EFL Students' Reading Comprehension And Learning Of Passive Form

It has been generally agreed upon in SLA research that drawing learners' attention to linguistic features is conducive for learning to take place in classroom second language learning since Schmidt proposed Noticing Hypothesis. However, learners' own attention-drawing mechanisms might not be sufficient, thereby making learning through reading unpredictable. Hence textual enhancement (TE), as an external attention-drawing device to direct the readers' attention to specific linguistic features, has aroused many researchers' interests in English as second language countries. On the basis of Noticing Hypothesis, McLaughlin's information processing, and VanPatten's input processing models, this study attempts to examine the feasibility of integrating form learning into meaning-focused classes by employing textual enhancement as the attention-drawing device. Topic familiarity (TF), as the second variable that may affect the allocation of attention resources, has also been explored in this study. Specifically, the study addresses three research questions: (1) During L2 comprehension, does TE affect comprehension of meaning (as measured by a free-recall task) and the learning of grammatical forms (as measured by a form correction task)? (2) During L2 comprehension, does TF affect comprehension of meaning (as measured by a free-recall task) and the learning of grammatical forms (as measured by a form correction task)? (3) Is there any relationship between participants' performance on the form correction task and comprehension test?These questions were examined in a quasi-experimental study in which 130 college-level students were randomly assigned to one of the four treatment groups which differed with respect to textual enhancement (notated as±E) and topic familiarity (notated as±F): the +E/+F (n=35) group was exposed to enhanced and topic familiar input; the +E/-F (n=33) group received enhanced but topic less familiar input; the -E/+F (n=32) group was exposed to unenhanced but topic familiar input; the -E/-F (n=30) group received the unenhanced and topic less familiar input. Throughout the three-week treatment session, subjects in each group were exposed to a familiar or unfamiliar topic with or without textual enhancement. The target form selected for the study was English passive form. In the last session, the subjects were asked to retell the content after reading the text and finish the post form correction test after the reading task.The major findings are: (1) Textual enhancement is effective in drawing learners' attention to the target forms with minimal interruption to the meaning comprehension. (2) Topic familiarity is capable of aiding the students' comprehension and reallocating their attentional resources to both form and meaning, at least with English passive forms. (3) The allocation of attention to the linguistic form does not interfere with learners' comprehension of the text meaning, which indicates that enhancement treatment is able to integrate attention to form within the context of meaning comprehension. In addition, the author explained the different findings between the present study and previous studies from the features of the target forms, the input factors like frequency, saliency, and the learner factor like L2 proficiency. Overall, the present study is expected to extend the scope of relevant research both theoretically and empirically by examining both the input factor (textual enhancement) and learner factor (topic familiarity) that may affect the allocation of attention resources in second language learning. Hopefully the findings will have implications for the focus-on-form agenda and the meaning-oriented communicative teaching classes in colleges.