The Effects Of Textual Enhancement On Efl Learners’ Stabilization Of English Subjunctive Conditional

The acquisition of English subjunctive conditionals has been always the weak link of EFL learners. This research was inspired by Aliakbar and Mehdi’s(2012) study on textual enhancement formats to investigate the effects of textual enhancement on EFL learners’ stabilization of English subjunctive conditional. Little researches, however, have been conducted to investigate the role of textual enhancement in noticing language forms of domestic literature. There are also fewer researches that were conducted the effects of textual enhancement formats on the EFL learners’ English subjunctive conditional. Therefore, on the theoretical basis of Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis(1995), the purpose of this study is to investigate whether the textual enhancement formats can induce the Chinese students’ improvement of English subjunctive conditional’s stabilization. In this study, two questions are raised :(1) What are the major stabilized error types of EFL learners’ application of English subjunctive conditional? and(2) Does textual enhancement format improve EFL learners’ stabilized errors in the application of English subjunctive conditional?There are altogether 60 non-English freshmen participating in the current study. 60 students are randomly divided into five groups: four experimental groups are bold, capitalized,italics and underlined respectively and control group without any intervention. Before the experiment, all these 60 subjects complete the translation task to examine students’ language competence of subjunctive conditional. The post test is 2 reading tests and the subjects have to attend the immediate post-test after the experiment, a test paper including grammatical judgment test and error correction test.After the analysis of all the data by SPSS 16.0, the results are as follows:(1) In the application of English subjunctive conditional, Chinese students mainly committed two kinds of stabilized errors, e.g., misuse of the linking verb were in hypothetical subjunctive conditional, and misuse of had +-en pattern in counterfactual subjunctive conditional; Chinese students intentionally avoid using subjunctive conditional sentences in their practice;(2)Although four TE formats focus learners’ attention on the target structure, only bold,capitalized and underlined enhanced texts can improve learners’ stabilization of English subjunctive conditional, in which the underlined TE is the most effective format.