Noticing Function Of Output Hypothesis In Promoting Senior High Students' Acquisition Of English Subject-verb Agreement

Grammar is an important part of English learning,and it is a difficult part for the students to learn English well.Senior High school students often complain about spending a lot of time and efforts learning it,and the results are still unsatisfactory.Among grammar,the learning of the subject-verb agreement used by learners frequently is the bottleneck of English grammar teaching for a long time.Therefore,it is necessary to explore an effective teaching method to solve this problem.Swain(1998)proposes four functions of output in his Output Hypotheses,namely: the noticing function,the hypothesis-testing function,the metalinguistic function and the fluency function.The noticing function implys that output production of the target language can make learners realize their language problems and pay attention to the gap between interlanguage and target language to promote the acquisition of language form.Based on this theory,this study aims to detect whether noticing function can promote senior high students' acquisition of language form by the qualitative and quantitative methods.Thus,three research questions are explored:(1)Is there correlation between noticing degree and the acquisition of the subject-verb agreement?(2)If yes,does noticing function of output promote the acquisition of the subject-verb agreement?(3)Can noticing function improve the students' enthusiasm in grammar learning?In the experiment,the subjects are ninety students chosen randomly from grade two in Zhangzi No.1Senior High School,Shanxi province.They are divided into two groups: one 45 is as an experimental group,and the other 45 is as a controlled group.The teaching method of the experimental group is based on noticing function of output hypothesis,and the controlled group receives traditional grammar teaching method.The study lasts a semester.The data are collected from a pre-test,a post-test,a questionnaire and a face-to-face interview,and analyzed by SPSS 17.0.The results of this study can be shown in the following aspects: Firstly,the analyses of questionnaire and correlation show that there is a significant correlation between noticing degree and the acquisition of the subject-verb agreement.Learners' noticing degree for the acquisition of the subject-verb agreement is also improved greatly.Secondly,the teaching method based on noticing function of output hypothesis can promote the acquisition of the subject-verb agreement by comparing the results of pretest and post-test.By using this method,students' grammar ability in the experimental group is improved greatly.Thirdly,students of the experimental group show more interest in learning grammar after being trained by output tasks.Therefore,noticing function can help enhance the students' enthusiasm for learning English grammar according to the results of interview.The importance of the present study is that it proves the feasibility and validity of applying noticing function of output hypothesis in English subject-verb agreement in senior high school,and recommends some suggestions for the future study: noticing of linguistic forms can promote high school students' acquisition in the process of output according to their need.