Application Of Attention-drawing Devices In SLA

Noticing Hypothesis emphasizes the effective role of noticing in second language acquisition (SLA), which has influenced greatly in the field of SLA. On the basis of Noticing Hypothesis, many researchers both at home and abroad are engaging in the studies of boosting the learners' noticing of certain target forms. The related studies indicate that visual input enhancement and text-reconstruction task can be adopted in second language teaching to promote learners' noticing of target forms, thereby facilitating their acquisition.Under the background, this study attempts to investigate whether two attention-drawing devices, visual input enhancement and text-reconstruction task, can facilitate learners' acquisition of target forms, attributive clauses, in regular college English courses. Specifically, this study intends to answer the following question:As compared with rule explanation, do visual input enhancement and text-reconstruction task better facilitate learners' acquisition of target forms in both immediate test and delayed test?To answer the research question,105 non-English-major students from three parallel classes of a university in Jiangsu Province were chosen for this study. They were divided into three groups and participated in a one-month experiment. During the experiment, participants in the two experimental groups received different treatments, visual input enhancement or text-reconstruction task respectively, and finished different exercises as required; while the control group only received the rule explanation instruction on attributive clauses based on the same input materials and finished some related exercises. Three tests, including the pretest, the immediate test and the delayed test about attributive clauses, were employed in this study to examine the results. The data collected were analyzed by SPSS 16.0.The results suggest that compared with rule explanation, text-reconstruction task can better boost learners' acquisition of attributive clauses. On the contrary, visual input enhancement fails to show measurable gains in learners' acquisition, despite the positive impact of enhancement on the learners' noticing of attributive clauses in the input. Therefore, in the process of college English teaching, teachers should attach more importance to learners' output in addition to rule explanation. Teachers can fully utilize effective output devices, in combination with the device of visual input enhancement, to promote learners' noticing of target forms so as to facilitate their acquisition.