Abstract:
The benefits of textual input enhancement in the acquisition of linguistic forms have produced mixed re- sults in SLA literature. The present study investigates the effects of textual enhancement on adult foreign language intake of two English linguistic forms-subjunctive mood and inversion structures-to explore the role of the type of linguistic items in input enhancement studies. It also investigates learners’ trend of de- velopment in the acquisition process of these structures. Thirty first year college-level participants were exposed to twelve enhanced texts for subjunctive mood and twelve other texts for inversion structures. The study employed a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design to explore the effectiveness of instructional treatment in the short term and long term acquisition of the structures. Alongside a pretest and a posttest, three production tests were administered to assess the trend of development in each structure. The results revealed that textual enhancement aided the learning of the target forms. With regard to type of linguistic items, significant benefits of subjunctive mood over inversion structures were found during both short term and long term. This study revealed that textual input enhancement may have differential effects on the acquisition of linguistic forms. Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications are also discussed.
Machine summary:
"69-78),Spring 2013 Textual Enhancement across Linguistic Structures: EFL Learners' Acquisi- tion of English Forms Shadab Jabbarpoor1* Esmaeel Abdollahzadeh2 1 Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran 2 English Dept.
The present study investigates the effects of textual enhancement on adult foreign language intake of two English linguistic forms-subjunctive mood and inversion structures-to explore the role of the type of linguistic items in input enhancement studies.
Keywords: textual input enhancement, subjunctive mood, inversion structures Introduction In the recent years there has been an increas- ing interest in the idea that drawing learners’ at- tention to the linguistic features of the L2 input is beneficial for second language development.
This technique involves enhancing the linguistic forms through manipulations like underlining, bolding, italiciz- ing, enlarging the font size, changing the font color and style or combination of all these to draw the reader’s attention to particular informa- tion in a text mainly to make more salient a par- ticular item in the written input that learners normally may not notice.
Regard- ing the effect of instruction in a textual enhance- ment task, Doughty and Varela (1998) suggest that 'The teacher should draw students’ attention to form rather than leaving it to chance that stu- dents will notice linguistic features without any pedagogical assistance' (p: 115).
CONCLUSION The results of this study lend some support to the purported benefits of textual enhancement on the acquisition of two target forms by EFL learners, in general, and a significant benefit of the more salient form (subjunctive mood) over the less salient form (inversion structure), in particular."