Application Of Output Hypothesis In Senior High School EFL Classroom

The present thesis attempts to investigate the effects and functions of language output in foreign language acquisition in order to find out an effective way to promote students'language output and enhance communicative ability thus to improve the quality of foreign language learning and teaching.Swain's (1995)"Comprehensible Output Hypothesis"maintains that output performs three functions, namely, the noticing/triggering function, the hypothesis-testing function, and the meta-linguistic function. Based on Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis, the study intends to examine the effectiveness of output-oriented senior high school English teaching model in promoting learners'overall English proficiency. Specifically, the experimental study pursues the following four research questions:1. What is the current status of language output for senior high school students?2. How to design output-oriented classroom instruction?3. Is the output-oriented teaching model able to improve overall foreign language proficiency for senior high school students? If so, to what extend?4. Is output the outcome of acquisition or the process of acquisition?With an experimental research method employed, the present study aims to explore whether output is conductive to improving learners'acquisition of the target language. Altogether 68 Senior Grade Two students from the two parallel classes in Funing Taiying Middle School participated in the present study. The whole experiment consisted of the following three procedures:1. Distributing questionnaires to all the subjects, aiming at investigating the present situations of language output for senior high school students.2. Proposing output-oriented English classroom teaching model on the basis of Swain's comprehensible output hypothesis, and designing teaching plans focusing on productive skills training program. 3. Implementing the teaching experiment with an attempt to test whether the experimental model is conductive to improving learners'overall English proficiency.All the valid data collected from the experiment were processed with the statistical package for social science (SPSS) software (version 15.0). After the data analysis and discussion the following results and findings were obtained:1. English classroom teaching model in senior high school is mostly teacher-centered. Though students are aware of the importance of output, they have had little output practice and they lack confidence in producing language output, and the students'ability of producing language is rather unsatisfactory.2. Teachers are required to design various interactive activities, in which natural environment of communication and suitable communicative topics for interaction are offered. It is vital to create a relaxed and harmonious atmosphere with an aim to guarantee and improve the output quality of target language.3. There existed no significant difference in the two groups of the subjects in the pretest and they were on the same English proficiency level before the treatment. After 17-week teaching experiment, the students in the experimental group outperformed those in the control group in the posttest.4. Output has a direct effect on language development. Language output is not a matter of result of language acquisition, but also is a learning process. In other words, language processing contributes to language acquisition.The empirical study lends support to Swain's output hypothesis, and suggests two significant pedagogical implications:1. The traditional viewpoints on output should be changed. English teachers should pay greater attention to the functions of output in language learning.2. The teachers and students'roles should be changed. The interaction between teacher-student and student-student should be strengthened, which can fully embody the students'subjective status. It is also necessary to develop students'input and output simultaneously, so that it can better improve the students'English integrated ability.It is concluded that since output play a practical role in improving foreign language acquisition. In the practice of teaching, teachers should try to enhance students'output awareness, create optimal environment of language output and provide more opportunities of output for learners. Consequently, the efficiency of foreign language teaching can be improved.