Processing instruction and a Role for Output in Second Language Acquisition

Processing instruction and a Role for Output in Second Language Acquisition

AnnieHazelLinda

Wayne

InstructionWayne

Processing Instruction• Processing instruction is an approach to

comprehension-based learning.• In PI, learners are put in situations where they

cannot comprehend a sentence by depending on context, prior knowledge, or other clues. They must focus on the language itself.

• Through a variety of focused listening and reading exercises, learners had to pay attention to how the target forms were used in order to comprehend the meaning.

Researcher of PI

• Van Pattern is convinced that language acquisition can be fostered as long as classes and materials are meaning-based instruction with a form focus.

How does PI form?• According to Van Pattern, first it is important to identify a

processing difficulty related to the target grammar item. Then providing learners with explicit information about both the item itself and the processing strategies that lead to error.

• Learners engage in structured input activities in which they must make meaning-based decisions about sentences given the use or omission of the target form in the input. For instance, the example allows learners, particularly English native speakers to work out whether the first noun phrase was a subject or a direct object by matching the sentence to either drawing or English translation.

Example. Me llaman los padres. Me call the parents. ' My parents call me.' (not 'I call my parents.')

• In short, PI emphasizes the fact that form-meaning relationships more likely to become intake for the developing system. In addition, Van Pattern also believes that system development can occur in speaking situations when these push learners to become better processors, and lead them to notice structures fill gaps in their L2 linguistic system.

• In fact, the benefit of PI is not only focus on input processing but also proves a chance for learners to enhance their out, while engaging in activities with the interlocutors.

Contribution for Output to L2 Acquisition?

• To talk about the possibility of building a case for output in terms of linguistic system. A scholar called Swain who thinks output pushes learners away from the semantic processing that comprehending input entails to the syntactic processing required to encode meaning.

• Swain indicates that output helps acquisition by the following processes:

1. pushing learners to notice the gap between what they want to say and what they can say.

2. providing opportunities to formulate, test and get feedback on hypothesis about encoding L2 meaning.

3. automatizing encoding procedures. 4. allowing learners to develop a personal

voice in extended discourse. 5. generating metatalk about language that

deepens awareness of form-meaning relationships.

• Within this framework, output practice leads to L2 acquisition by automatizing and restructuring the cognitive procedures involved in communicative task performance.

• Moreover, another extraordinary discovery from Ellis revealed that new linguistic knowledge can come from output by forcing the analysis, separation, and creative recombination of remembered language chunks. By working on remembered language systematically, learners' creative experimentation might allow them to build their way to syntactical rules.

• Lastly, in 2005 McDonough found that learners engaging in self-corrected or modified output in response to negative feedback more often showed outstanding progress in development of their target language structure than those who were simply exposed to input with no opportunity to self-correct.

The Present Study

• The study is the assessment of output in the acquisition of L2 morphosyntax in comparison with PI and other instructions where input and output occur in classroom interaction.

• Production and grammaticality judgement tasks are assessed only. The dependent variable 'acquisition' will refer to development of the linguistic system, and will be operationalized as performance on the two tasks.

• The GJ was chosen because it has been argued that superior PI outcomes on interpretation merely reflect the type of practise that learners received.

• It was an experiment between PI and CO groups.

The Present Study

Hazel

• Participants

Processing instruction (PI)-27 students

Communicative output (CO)-28 students

Control group (C)-25 students

Comparison group

- 30 Spanish native speakers

Method

• Spanish Anticausative se’s Compatibility With Processing Instruction

Spanish se is to derive variations in sentences meaning by “absorbing” one of the noun phrase (NP) arguments that are normally possible for a given verb.

Se derives a number of possible meaning in Spanish that depend on the subtle semantic properties of verbs and their accompanying NPs.

EX a. Ellos lavaron la ropa. → Ello se lavaron.

AGENT PATIENT AGENT

“They washed the clothes.” “They washed themselves/

each others.”

b. Ellos lavaron la ropa. → Se lavó la ropa. AGENT PATIENT PATIENT

“They washed “The clothes were

the clothes” washed/One washed

clothes”

c. Ellos secaron la ropa. → Se secó la ropa. AGENT PATIENT PATIENT

“They dried the clothing.” “The clothes Ø dried/ were

dried/ One dried clothes.”

• Treatment Procedures• The treatment period lasted 7 days, with

25 out of 50 min taken on day1 and day7 for testing.

• The contrast between treatment groups would be confined to the presence or absence of learner output during class activities.

• All PI activities as whole-group, teacher-led interaction with immediate error correction.

• Activities provided high concentrations of se in the input while requiring learners to make a truth judgment about the teacher’s sentences.

EX Teacher instructions: Read the following sentences to your

students and have them raise their hands if they think they are true.

¿Cuálde estas oraciones describe los buenos modales en

clase? (Which of these sentences describes good classroom

manners?)

1. Se levanta la mano antes de hablar. (You raise your hands before speaking.)

2. Se puede hablar durante los exámenes. (You can talk during exams.)

• The CO group experienced whole-class activities that required language production in response to open-ended teacher questions and communicative task instructions.

• A discourse pattern emerge that could be characterized as repeated cycles through initiation, response, and evaluation (IRE).

• Teacher-initiated questions in the CO group focused on achieving specific communicative tasks.

• Data Gathering and Assessment

Assessment consisted of written production and grammaticality judgment tasks administered immediately prior (pretest), immediately following (posttest), and 24 days after instruction (delay posttest).

• Production task

consisted of different drawings accompanied by a verb and an NP. Learners were asked to write a description for each picture using the word given.

EX:

Scoring and Coding Procedures for the Production

Answers that correctly used se in an intransitive sentence with the given verb and NP were awarded one point.

EX

Se cocinó el pescado.

(The fish cooked.)

• GJ task

asked learners to rate the grammatical acceptability of sentences on a Likert Scale.

EX:

Sample items from the GJ task

Se entra por la puerta. -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3

Se descompusieron las máquinas. -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3

Se trae cerveza a todas las fiestas. -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3

(One enters through the door.)

(The machine broke down.)

(Beer is brought to all the parties)

Scoring and Coding Procedures for GJ Tasks

Learners to indicate their judgments were entered as raw scores into individual means calculations for the eight grammatically correct items.

EX:

Se entra por la puerta. -3 -2 -1 0 +1 +2 +3

(One enters through the door.)

Result Linda

• Quantitative data

→ negative response to Q1 and 2

CO learners outperform PI learners

on the GJ and production tasks • Qualitative data

→ negative response to Q3 and 4

Evident independent role for output

which is exist in acquisition.

DiscussionAnnie

Discussion

Focus

→ primarily output as a major component of CO group interactions that was absent from the PI group’s classroom activities.

Output and Task Demands• If output need not entail an onerous task burden,

→ poorer results for TI in other studies came less from production requirements than from the nonmeaningful nature of the interactions.

EX:

TI(drills)→ either mechanical, meaningful or communicative

*None-task-oriented interactions

→ often force learners to process a gap between the literal and intended meaning of instructor utterances.

Output and Acquisition

The best explanation for the CO results would appear to lie beyond the linguistic features of the ambient input.

(not just focus on structure)

Attention to L2 Form• input alone

→ provide learners with evidence of L2 form-meaning connections that lead to initial hypotheses about L2 structure,

• further attention to form driven forward by the ability to control one’s own message as output.

• Meta-linguistic Intervention

further investigation

→ is needed to more definitively characterize the relationship between metalinguistic knowledge & the L2 system,

→ including more precise assessments of explicit and implicit knowledge, a larger number of target items on assessment tasks, and the longitudinal gathering of both quantitative and qualitative data.

Limitations of the Study• suggestive of a link among

→ output, metalinguistic analysis, and acquisition,

→ the precise nature of their interrelationship, and the learning mechanisms they engage, remains unclear and would require substantial further research to determine concretely.

SummarizeBy providing quantitative evidence

communicative output• can yield group results on par or better than

those of PI..• transcript data from each treatment, this study

has questioned an account of output’s role in L2 acquisition → limited to accuracy and fluency in accessing the implicit system,

• assertions that system development occurs only via input processing.

Thank you