A Study Of The Effects Of Output Task Types On The Incidental Acquisition Of L2 Lexical Chunks

Lexical chunk acquisition is currently receiving more and more attention in second language pedagogy and research.How to acquire lexical chunks better has become a major research issue in the field of second language acquisition.Swain's"Comprehensible Output Hypothesis" has been proved to be beneficial to second language acquisition,but most researchers mainly focus on the impact on vocabulary acquisition and little on lexical chunks acquisition.Therefore,this research is based on the theory of output hypothesis and aims to compare the effect of output task types on the incidental acquisition of L2 lexical chunks.The current study attempts to answer the following three questions:1)How do different types of output tasks affect learners'incidental acquisition of L2 lexical chunks' receptive knowledge?2)How do different types of output tasks affect learners' incidental acquisition of L2 lexical chunks'productive knowledge?3)What are the effects of the output tasks on the retention of L2 lexical chunks?160 non-English major sophomores participated in the experiment.They were divided into four groups with equal English proficiency levels.After reading the same experimental materials,they completed tasks with different degree of focus:reading,writing,reconstruction and reconstruction reinforcement.After reading the materials again,they completed the immediate test of the productive and receptive knowledge of the target lexical chunks and filled in the questionnaire.The delayed post-test was conducted after one week of the experiment.The results of the two tests were analyzed by SPSS 23.0.Another 8 students were interviewed after the immediate test and the interview materials were used to explain the quantitative analysis results.The main findings of the study are as follows:1)In terms of the incidental acquisition of receptive knowledge,the output task was more effective in promoting the learner's incidental acquisition compared with the input task.The more focused an output task was,the more likely it would promote the acquisition effects.2)For the incidental acquisition of productive knowledge,only the strongly focused output task was conducive to the acquisition.3)The strongly focused task yielded the best long-term retention compared with other task types.The research has certain implications to the current L2 lexical chunk teaching in China:1)In the process of lexical chunk teaching,teachers should effectively use output tasks and provide relevant input in time.For the different knowledge of lexical chunks,the selection of output tasks(including the focus degree and type)should be different.2)English teachers and material compilers can design and select the strongly focused output tasks to facilitate the learner's incidental acquisition of L2 lexical chunks.