A Study On The Application Of The Noticing Function Of Output Hypothesis To Attributive Clause In Senior High School

Grammar is an important part of English learning, and it is the key part for thestudents to learn English well. As a grammatical item, the attributive clause is always thefocus of teaching. However, attributive clause has been the bottleneck of English grammarteaching for such a long time. High school students often complain about spending a lot oftime and efforts learning it, the results are still unsatisfactory. Therefore, it is necessary toexplore an effective teaching method.Swain (1995) proposes three functions based on the output hypothesis theory, namely:the noticing function, the hypothesis-testing function, and the metalinguistic function. Thenoticing function refers to the output production of the target language can make learnersrealize their language problems and pay attention to the gap between interlanguage and thetarget language.This thesis makes an empirical study on the feasibility of Swain’s output hypothesisand noticing function on English attributive clause teaching in senior high school. Thisstudy lasts one month, adopting contractive groups. In the experiment, the subjects are onehundred and six students chosen from grade two in Xiuyan No.2Senior High School. Theyare divided into two groups.54students in the experimental group who receive theteaching method based on output hypothesis and52students in the control group whoreceive traditional grammar teaching method. The data is collected from a pre-test and twopost-tests, two questionnaires and a face-to-face interview and analyzed by SPSS.This study aims to explore three research questions: Does output task promotestudents’ noticing of the attributive clause? Can the output task facilitate the acquisition ofthe attributive clause? Can the noticing function enhance the students’ motivation ingrammar learning?The mean score of the two groups’ underlining is4.35and4.04respectively, thefinding in this empirical study shows output task is more effective for students to notice theattributive clause than the traditional method. The two groups’ mean score of pre-test is63.41and63.54respectively, indicating that at the beginning of the experiment, the twogroups’ grammar ability is equivalent. The two groups’ mean score of post-test1isrespectively70.63and65.17. It shows output task is advantageous to acquire attributiveclause. And noticing function can help enhance the students’ enthusiasm for learningEnglish grammar.The importance of present study is that it proves the feasibility and validity ofapplying output hypothesis and noticing function to English attributive clause teaching in senior high school, and recommends some suggestions for future study. But there are stillsome limitations in the present study. Firstly, the size of subjects and the time of study istoo limited, the results gained from the experiment may not steady and lasting. Secondly,the present study only chooses the attributive clause as the target language, the resultsprobably can’t strongly prove that applying Swain’s output hypothesis and noticingfunction to other English grammar item is effective.