A Study Of Input Enhancement And Output Requirements On The Acquisition Of Lexical Colloactions

Lexical collocations plays an important role in second language acquisition (SLA) forthey contribute much to the ways learners listen, speak, read and write. A good mastery oflexical collocations and high language proficiency is closely interrelated. However, it isdifficult for second language learners to remember and acquire these collocations becauseof their number, which amounts to tens of thousands. As a result, finding a more effectiveway to promote the study of lexical collocations becomes necessary.During the recent years, more and more researchers begin to explore the effect ofdrawing learners’ attention to the language target forms. In the field of second languageacquisition (SLA), visual input enhancement and comprehensible output are two mainspecific pedagogical approaches to draw second language learners’ attention to languagetarget forms. Based on the reasons above, the present study attempts to investigate theeffects of visual input enhancement and output requirements on the acquisition of lexicalcollocations and furthermore whether the two methods combined can promote theacquisition of lexical collocations more effectively.This study is a controlled experimental one with a pretest-posttest design, involvingthree experimental groups and one control group (24participants in each group). As for theparticipants in experimental group one, they receive reading passages with lexicalcollocations highlighted through typographical technique boldface. In other words, thematerials received by the participants in this group are made visually salient through inputenhancement. As for the participants in experimental group two, they are supposed toreconstruct some sentences based on the text they read with vocabulary prompts (cuewords) that are provided for them. In other words, the participants in this group areengaged in output tasks (reconstruction tasks). As for the participants in experimentalgroup three, they receive both enhanced input and output tasks (reconstruction tasks)during the treatment. As for the participants in control group, they do not receive anytreatment, that is, neither input enhancement nor output tasks (reconstruction tasks), whatthey do is merely to answer some questions about the passage they read during the wholeprocess.The major findings of this study are as follows: Firstly, the learners who received input enhancement treatment make significant gainson the acquisition of lexical collocations. Therefore, it can be concluded that the inputenhancement has a positive effect on the acquisition of lexical collocations.Secondly, the learners who engaged in output tasks (reconstruction tasks)dosignificantly better on the post-test. Thus, it proves that output tasks are effective indeveloping learners’ ability to acquire lexical collocations.Thirdly, the group that not only received enhanced input but also did output tasksperform the best among the four groups. That is to say, visual input enhancement andoutput requirements combined not only have a significant effect on the acquisition oflexical collocations but also perform even better than that of input enhancement and outputrequirements applied separately.The last finding shows that the participants in input-enhanced group perform almostas well as the participants who finish output tasks on the acquisition of lexical collocations.In other words, there is no statistically significant difference in the performance betweeninput enhancement and output requirements on the acquisition of lexical collocations.