A Comparative Study Of Input Processing Instruction And Traditional Instruction From Foreign Language Learning Anxiety Perspective

Grammar learning is the main aspect of learners’ foreign language learning process.And grammar teaching is also a concerned matter to educational experts and teachers.English grammar plays an important role in students’ examinations.And for second language learners,learning grammar well is a challenge,which makes the country pay more and more attention to the study of English.But how to effectively enable learners to learn the language is a problem that researchers in the field of second language acquisition are more concerned about in recent years.Foreign language learning anxiety is the biggest affective disorder in language learning(Yang Jin,2000;Chen Xiuling,2004;Shi Zhenzhang&Liu Zhenqian,2006).It is one of the individual differences among foreign language learners.Too high or too low anxiety can influence the effect of learners’ language learning.Grammar teaching has always been a concern for educators,and it is also a key and difficult point in teaching.In the classroom where Chinese students learn English,teachers mainly use traditional teaching methods to teach grammar through mechanical practice.After Vanpatten(1996)put forward the input processing instruction,many scholars at home and abroad began to study the teaching method with input as the main characteristic,which is compared with the traditional teaching method.However,most of the studies are focused on learners whose mother tongue is Latin,and few studies on mother tongue Chinese.Therefore,based on previous studies and reading relevant literature,this study contrasted input processing teaching with 3p grammar teaching from the perspective of foreign language learning anxiety.This paper studied the effect of these two teaching methods on junior high school students’ learning English present perfect tense.The research questions of this paper are as follows:1)What are the differences between the processing instruction and 3P instruction on the interpretation task of the English present perfect tense? What are the differences on the production tasks? Is it influenced by different levels of anxiety?2)In the delayed posttest,what are the differences between the processing instruction and 3P instruction on the interpretation task of the English present perfect tense? What are the differences on the production tasks?This study selected two natural classes,named respectively processing instruction group(PI)and the traditional instruction group(TI),a total of 84 students as subjects.The subjects of the experiment were selected from the second grade students in Hengshui No.5 Middle School.Subjects were asked to participate the pretest and foreign language learning anxiety questionnaire before the experiment.The second week was the teaching experiment stage.The two classes used the input processing method and the traditional teaching method to teach the English present perfect tense respectively.After finishing the teaching experiment,the subjects were asked to finish the immediate posttest in time.And then delayed post test was carried out for the subjects after two weeks.The data were analyzed with SPSS13.0 at the end of the experiment.The experimental results show that the input processing teaching method and 3P grammar teaching have some effect on learning English present perfect tense.In the interpretation task of target language,the input processing method is superior to the traditional teaching method;in the productive tasks,traditional teaching method is more effective.Input processing teaching method is more effective for middle level of foreign language learning anxiety.This research enriches the empirical research of input processing teaching method to a certain extent,and also provides reference for the teaching of English grammar.