خلاصة:
This study investigated the impact of oral pushed output on the learning and retention of English perfect tenses. During the study, a pre-test was administered to 22 freshmen majoring in English translation. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups. Then, for six sessions both groups received explicit instructions on English perfect tenses. Every session, the experimental group recorded their oral performances on some picture description and translation tasks whose completion entailed the use of the instructed language form, while the control group merely did some conventional multiple choice tests covering the instructed structures. Following the treatment sessions, a post-test was run. Four weeks later, a delayed post-test was also administrated. Analysis of the data through repeated measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) supported the facilitative effects of oral pushed output on the learning and retention of English perfect tenses. The finding of the study can have some implications for English Language Teaching (ELT) materials developers and practitioners.
ملخص الجهاز:
A large number of output studies have focused on the functions of output including noticing (Izumi, 2002; Izumi & Bigelow, 2000; Izumi, Bigelow, Fujiwara & Fearnow, 1999; Mahmoudabadi, Soleimani, Jafarigohar & Iravani, 2015; Schmidt, 1990; Schmidt & Frota, 1986; Swain,1995; Uggen, 2012; Wang & Castro, 2010 ), hypothesis testing (Swain,1995), automaticity (Anderson, 1982; de Bot, 1996; DeKeyser, 1997; McLaughlin, 1987), grammatical monitoring (Izumi, 2003), and stimulating syntactic processing (de Bot, 1996).
Scholars involved in output studies have implemented different instruments and tasks to prompt output among which are 'think aloud' activities (Swain &Lapkin, 1995), stimulated recalls (Egi, 2008), focused communicative tasks (Nobuyoshi & Ellis, 1993), collaborative output tasks (Murray, 1992; Storch, 1998), story completion, and story sequencing (Mackey &Philp, 1998), problem solving (Muranoi, 2000), information gap activities (Leeman, 2003), picture description (Birjandi & Jafarpour Mamaghani, 2014; Foster & Skehan, 1996; Gilabert, 2007; Shehadeh, 2003; Tavakoli & Skehan, 2005), collaborative story sequencing tasks (Mackey & McDonough, 2000), jigsaw tasks (Swain & Lapkin, 2001), and dictogloss (Jabbarpoor &Tajeddin, 2013; Kowal & Swain, 1994; Swain & Lapkin,1998, 2001).
The stated need along with the renewed focus on language form inspired the researchers to conduct the present study with the purpose of investigating the efficacy of oral pushed output in the enhancement of Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners’ grammatical accuracy, and the retention of their acquired grammatical knowledge.
This finding is in line with the findings of similar studies, confirming the positive effects of providing language learners with pushed output opportunities as a means of practice (Byrne & Jones, 2014; Izumi, 2002; Leeser, 2008; Mackey & Philp, 1998; McDonough, 2005; Shehadeh, 2003; Song & Suh, 2008).