Influence Of Input And Output Combination Task On Junior Middle School Students' Preposition Learning

Prepositions, as a kind of special language composition, hold an important place in learning English. But the teaching and learning of prepositions in China is not optimistic. Prepositions acquisition is still one of the bottleneck of English learning and caused a lot of trouble for EFL or ESL teachers’ teaching and students’ learning. In addition, although the preposition acquisition research both in breadth and in depth study presented the unprecedented pomp, it is rare both from the theoretical research and empirical research to study the preposition acquisition based on the theory of input and output,and the theoretical basis of the preposition acquisition is limited to the theory of category, the concept of migration and the theory of metaphor, etc.Therefore, based on Krashen’s Input theory and Swain’s Output theory, the author aims to research prepositions learning and certifies Input and output integration theory. Through different Task-oriented Combinations of Input-output, the author tries to find more effective ways to learn English prepositions and further research the role of task-oriented combinations of Input-Output in second language teaching. The research questions are: 1)Combined with single-tasking, what do the tasks combinations have effects on immediate memory for preposition IN? 2)Combined with single-tasking, what do tasks combinations have effects on delayed memory of preposition IN? 3)How do tasks combinations have effects on the retention of second language preposition IN? The author chose 120 students from a middle school in Binzhou, Shandong province as subjects and divided them into 4 experimental group. The concrete experiment covers three stages: the pretest and experimental preparation; task training and instant test; delayed test.Through the data statistics and analysis, the author found that: first, the group of Input is more effective in learning preposition IN than the group of Output; second, tasks combinations of Input-Output have dramatic effects on the preposition IN acquisition; third, the order of tasks combinations of Input-Output have different effects on learning preposition; finally, participants have serious phenomenon of loss for the knowledge of preposition. So educators should help students to review the old knowledge in SLT. An important finding of the study is that the combination of “output and input tasks” for the preposition acquisition can produce best effect.The input and output integration teaching mode should be adopted in the process of preposition teaching. Although the research has all kinds of limitations, it can give educators some practical and theoretical significance.