The Effects Of Processing Instruction And Dictogloss On The Acquisition Of The English Unaccusative Verbs

The role and practice of grammar instruction has been a key issue in the field of second language teaching.According to Nassaji and Fotos(2011),during the past few decades,a number of the theoretical and empirical developments in the field have led to a fundamental shift in the teaching of grammar from grammar-based approaches to communicative approaches,and to form-focused approaches.As two different modes of instruction,considerable debate has centered on the relative value of input-based and output-based instruction.The present study attempts to compare the relative effectiveness of processing instruction(PI),an input-based focus on form technique,and dictogloss tasks(DG),an output-oriented focus-on-form type of instruction,on intermediate Chinese EFL learners' ability to comprehend and produce sentences containing English unaccusative verbs as well as to see which of the two instructional tecniques is more durable.Based on the aims of the present study,four specific related research questions were formulated:(1)What are the relative effects of PI and DG in helping intermediate Chinese EFL learners to comprehend the English unaccusative verbs?(2)If there is any advantage of one type of instruction over the other in helping learners comprehend the English unaccusative verbs,does the advantage hold over time?(3)What are the relative effects of PI and DG in helping intermediate Chinese EFL learners to produce the English unaccusative verbs?(4)If there is any advantage of one type of instruction over the other in helping learners produce the English unaccusative verbs,does the advantage hold over time?In the beginning,160 first-year students from three intact classes in a high school participated in the present study.They were randomly assigned to one of the two instructional groups(PI and DG)or to a control group(CG).This study employed a quasi-experimental pretest and posttest(immediate and delayed)design,in which a questionnaire on unaccusative constructions was used as pretest(Yip,1994),a timed grammaticality judgment test(GJT)and a written elicited production task(WEPT),respectively adapted from No & Chung(2006)and Hirakawa(2003),were used as posttests.The experiment lasted for four weeks: participants took the pretest during class time one week prior to treatment.Treatment for both experimental groups took place over two class periods(45 minutes each)during the following week,with the first posttest given immediately upon completion of treatment.The final posttest was administered one week after the first posttest.These tests consisted of two major parts: comprehension tasks and production tasks.After eliminations due to pretest scores,data from 142 participants yielded from the three tests were submitted to SPSS 21.0 to perform statistical analysis.Results showed that: 1)both PI and DG groups improved significantly on the comprehension of the English unaccusative verbs in the immediate posttest,but the advantage of processing instruction was much more obvious;2)for delayed comprehension posttest,the processing instruction was just as effective as dictogloss;3)both PI and DG groups seemed to perform better on the production of the English unaccusative verbs,but the fact that the Control group also made significant gains on the production task makes it hard to attribute the beneficial effects to the treatments that PI and DG groups received;4)thus,it could be deemed that the two types of instruction produced similar effects in helping the participants produce the English unaccusative constructions on the delayed posttest.One reasonable pedagogical implication is that both PI and DG are effective pedagogical tools to help intermediate Chinese EFL learners to acquire target grammatical forms,and the two methods should be combined in teaching practice to make full use of them.