Input, input processing, and output: A study with discourse-level input and the French causative

Abstract

This study examines the effects of input-oriented instruction and instruction that involves cycles of input plus output via three learning conditions with discourse-level input: (1) an input-oriented task in the form of a structured input reading activity, (2) a reading activity with comprehension questions, and (3) an input plus output-oriented task in the form of a text reconstruction activity, on the learning of the French causative structure. Results revealed that participants who engaged in the structured input reading activity performed significantly better than those in the other two learning conditions on both an interpretation and a production task.

Processing Instruction: A review of issues

“…Quite recently Wong (2015) conducted a study to examine the effectiveness of three instructional conditions: (1) input-based instruction which required learners to process a target form, (2) input-based instruction which exposed learners to a target form but did not require processing, and (3) input-plus-output-based instruction which required learners to process and produce a target form. The first condition in Wong's (2015) study was operationalized through PI, the second one was through reading comprehension (COMP), and the third one was through text reconstruction (TR).…”

“…Insofar the PI condition is concerned, the processing problem which it aimed to address was the first-noun principle. There were 60 college students of English background included in Wong's (2015) study. The students were divided into four groups: PI (N = 19), (TR) (N = 14), (COMP) (N = 15), and control (C) (N = 12).…”

“…For the assessment Wong (2015) included an interpretation and production test. These tests consisted of two types: A and B.…”

“…From these ten pictures, five required the students to use the target grammatical form while the other five did not. To ensure that the students did not have any significant difference in their reading comprehension skills, Wong (2015) gave them a reading comprehension test before the treatments.…”

“…These studies were conducted with different aims, including, for instance, to examine the relative effectiveness of PI in assisting the acquisition of grammatical forms in different languages, such as Japanese (e.g., Benati, 2015), English (e.g., Benati & Angelovska, 2015), French (e.g., VanPatten & Wong, 2004) and even Latin (e.g., Cox & Sanz, 2015), or to compare the effectiveness between PI and other instructional options, such as Meaning-Based Output Instruction (e.g., Farley, 2001a;VanPatten, Farmer & Clardy, 2009), dictogloss tasks (Qin, 2008;VanPatten, Inclezan, Salazar, & Farley, 2009), text reconstruction tasks (Wong, 2015), etc. In general, the results of the series of these studies indicated that PI was more effective than all of the instructional options with which it was compared.…”