An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Textual Enhancement And Focused Tasks On Senior High Students’ Acquisition Of Formulaic Sequences

Formulaic sequences play an important part in vocabulary acquisition.Nevertheless,they are often ignored due to their low salience.Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis reckons that noticing language forms in the input is vital in second language acquisition.It is found that textual enhancement and focused tasks are two attention-drawing devices.This study attempts to explore the effects of textual enhancement and focused tasks on senior high students’ acquisition of formulaic sequences via an experiment.It aims at answering three questions: 1)What are the effects of textual enhancement on senior high students’ acquisition of formulaic sequences? 2)What are the effects of focused tasks on senior high students’ acquisition of formulaic sequences? 3)What are the effects of textual enhancement combined with focused tasks on senior high students’ acquisition of formulaic sequences?Eighty-four Senior One students from a middle school of Guangzhou participated in this study.They were divided into four groups,namely the +TE-FT group,-TE+FT group,+TE+FT group and-TE-FT group,and received the following treatment: The +TE-FT group was exposed to a reading material with textual enhancement but it was not required to do a focused task.The-TE+FT group was required to do a focused task after reading a passage without textual enhancement.The +TE+FT group was exposed to enhanced input with a focused task requirement.The-TE-FT group was neither exposed to a reading material with textual enhancement nor required to do a focused task.After the treatment,participants were required to sequentially complete a productive test of formulaic sequences,a receptive test of formulaic sequences and a reflective self-assessment questionnaire which included self-assessment on their receptive and productive knowledge.Independent samples t-tests and one-way ANOVAs are employed to analyze the data in this study.The results are as follows:(1)textual enhancement with target formulaic sequences in bold promotes senior high students’ both comprehension and production;(2)focused tasks have no decisive effect on the comprehension of formulaic sequences.As regards the production,focused tasks don’t facilitate senior high students to focus on form but help them to pay attention to the meaning and use of formulaic sequences;and(3)the combination of textual enhancement and focused tasks exerts more positive effects than focused tasks do on senior high students’ comprehension of formulaic sequences,and its positive effect is much more significant than that of textual enhancement,especially on meaning and use of formulaic sequences.The present study verifies to a certain degree the effectiveness of textual enhancement and focused tasks on senior high students’ acquisition of formulaic sequences.It also sheds light on both textbook compilers and teachers.