A Study On Effect Of Input-based FOF Task And Output-based FOF Task On Acquisition Of English Lexical Bundles

Lexical bundles are word-clusters of high-frequency in real communication, including idioms, phrases, sentence-like fixed structures and the like. Lexical bundles are believed to be stored in our brains as unanalytical chunks so they are readily accessible when needed in communication. Due to its advantages, lexical bundles has attracted both L2researchers and teachers, however, how to improve the effectiveness of learning and teaching lexical bundles remains an issue. L2learning study in the past two decades has seen the arising of some important theories, including the input processing theory, the output hypothesis and focus-on-form (FOF) theory etc. Drawing on these theories, the present study made an attempt to operate the concepts of input-processing, output and focus-on-form as different types of classroom tasks and then compare their effects on lexical-bundle learning.As an experimental study, the research used the starting passage of Mark Twain’s novel The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn as the reading material and source of target lexical bundles. There are8target lexical bundles, including3syntactic chunks and5lexical chunks. The participants were two equal classes of senior high2, each with40students. The two classes were treated with different types of task:input-based FOF task (cloze) and output-based FOF task (translation) respectively (independent variable). After the treatment, two kinds of tests were conducted on the two groups:composition writing(post-test and delayed post-test) and a4-level self-evaluation scale; and use the frequency of right use of the target lexical bundles and scores of the self-evaluation scale as indicators of dependent variable, through which the effect of input-task vs. output-task on lexical bundle learning in general and on different kinds of lexical bundles, namely, syntactic chunks and phrasal chunks can be comparatively evaluated (dependent variable). Another goal is to compare the performances of the two treatment tasks themselves.The main results of the present study conclude the following aspects:First, about the effect of input-based and output-based FOF tasks on learning of lexical bundles, the translation(output) group overperformed the cloze (input) group in terms of productive use of the target chunks in the composition, with significant differences in both immediate test and delayed test; however, the cloze (input) group did better than the translation (output) group in completing the4-level scale of lexical bundles, which includes recognition as well as production, with no significant difference though. Secondly, no difference was found in effect of the two task types on learning of syntactic chunks and phrasal chunks. Thirdly, although the output-based task group did better than the input-based task group, both task types effectively increased the use of the target lexical bundles, and both led to focus-on-form; Fourthly, about the treatment tasks themselves, we found the translation group outperformed the cloze group, with the score of the former being significantly higher.This study was aimed to explore the effect of different task types on learning of lexical bundles. One the one hand, the results of the study shed some light on language teaching practice, and on the other hand, they have stimulated the researcher’s desire of further study, by using improved research design, for more empirical findings.