An Investigation Into Non-english Major Undergraduates’ Input Processing Of The Intensive Input Data

Chinese EFL learners have long been suffering “time-consuming and of low-efficiency”,“high scores but low competence” difficulty in EFL learning. Attempting to address theproblem, this research sets the goal of investigating into the learners’ input processingprocedures to detect the learners’ input processing problems which this research holds may belargely responsible for the poor EFL learning effect.In language learning input has always been primary while output is secondary. Input datahas to go through rather complicated cognitive processing procedures to become output. Inrecent years of SLA and Cognition Science studies, intake is put forward as the critical bridgebetween input and Second language acquisition. Intake refers to the portion of the input thatlearners attend to through attention for further processing. This means that only when theinput data is noticed and processed can the input data become intake which then is furtherprocessed and stored so as to be accessed in the process of output.According to VanPattern, input processing, together with systematic modification andoutput processing, makes up the three processing stages in SLA learning process. Inputprocessing refers to the psychological processing in which input contents are transferred intointake. Input processing is more crucial in the whole ESL and EFL learning process than theother two processing, for input processing is essential and fundamental for the latter two andis the part most concentrated by learners in usual learning contexts.But as input processing research is still at the initial stage and the factors that influence theinput processing are not systematically sorted yet. And the input processing study in Chinahas recently become heated, but still at theoretical establishing period. So this research startsat exploring the causative factors that affect in the input processing, and put up three researchquestions:1. What are the causative factors that influence the processing effects in the inputprocess?2. What are the undergraduates’ input processing like in their daily EFL study relatedto those factors?3. Are good students using the input processing strategies better than poorerones?4. What problems emerge in the ways Chinese college students process the input datathat hinder the input processing effects?The instrument of the research is a combined research methodology of qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative method contains literature research, diary and interviewwhile the quantitative is through questionnaire survey. The purpose of the qualitative researchactually is to provide theoretical and practical basis for the quantitative questionnaire.The research altogether set220first-year and second-year non-English majorundergraduate from Northwest A&F University as the research subjects, among whom20fordiary writing research,10for individual interview and190for questionnaire survey. Thesubjects were chosen randomly form8different colleges from Northwest A&F Universitycovering more than10majors. Among the subjects,113were boys and107were boys.The diary and interview was mainly processed through classification and generalization.The results of research data were analyzed through SPSS16.0in forms of frequency,correlation, and independent t-test. The findings are made brief as follows:Four Factors are concluded through literature research: comprehension, attention, memoryand automation of the input data. The questionnaire survey results show that theundergraduates have lower self-evaluations on their output competence in speaking andwriting than the evaluation of their test scores; that they give priority to comprehension of thetexts; that memory skills, which actually facilitate learners’ focal attention on linguistic formsand increase the memory frequency, such as retelling, repeating, reading aloud, reciting, areseldom used; that the students have strong awareness that outputting English likecommunication in English can promote English proficiency, but they showed lowerpreference in communicating; and that the students have not established very strongmetacognitive knowledge about their ways of learning English. And high-proficiency studentsuse a little more of the input processing strategies than low-proficiency students but show nosignificance difference in using them.The findings of the research reveal that comprehension of the input data doesn’t reallymean effective input processing in EFL learning. Comprehension of the input data is thebeginning but not the end of the input processing. In EFL Input processing, only whenfocusing on forms and focusing on meaning are both attended, and also enhanced throughsufficient memory skills and output practices can the input processing be effective. EFLLearners should focus attention both to the meanings and forms of the input data, andemphasize the processes of memory and output practices besides comprehension of the inputdata.