The Impact of Textual Input Enhancement and Explicit Rule Presentation on Iranian Elementary EFL Learners’ Intake of Simple Past Tense

Abstract

The present study investigated the impact of textual input enhancement and explicit rule presentation on 93 Iranian EFL learners' intake of simple past tense. Three intact general English classes in Tabriz Azad University were randomly assigned to: 1) a control group; 2) a TIE group; and 3) a TIE plus explicit rule presentation group. All participants were given 3 reading texts and comprehension questions to complete. For participants in groups 2 and 3 the input was textually enhanced through bolding. Participants in group 3 in addition had explicit rule presentation of simple past tense. Intake of simple past tense was measured through performance on a Multiple-Choice Recognition Tests. The results showed that there was a significant difference among pretest, first posttest and delayed posttest. Posttest 1 was significantly higher than posttest 2. Furthermore, TE+ rule presentation group significantly outperformed the control group in both posttest1 and posttest 2. The study concluded with some pedagogical implications.

Textual Enhancement: The Efficacy of Promoting Noun Phrase Acquisition

“…When the learners paid attention on that form, they were more attracted and focus on the target forms. The finding of this study also showed that TE was an effective focus on form technique, at least for learning NP, which is in line with Nahavandi & Mukundan (2013) who supported the effectiveness of TE.…”

The Impact of Textual Input Enhancement on Iranian Elementary EFL learners’ Vocabulary Intake

“…Furthermore, Widdowson (1990) claims, when learners are left to their own resources they "do not very readily infer knowledge of the language system from their communicative activities" (p.167). TIE involves highlighting special features of input that may go unnoticed under normal circumstances through typographically manipulating them (Nahavandi & Mukundan, 2013d). Therefore, based on the main objective of the study which was enhancing learners' vocabulary knowledge, the present study aimed at understanding if TIE as an implicit method of teaching would bring about any changes in Iranian elementary EFL learners vocabulary knowledge or not.…”

“…Furthermore, in order to check the students' intake of vocabulary both in pre and posttests multiple-choice recognition tests were used. The reason for using this kind of tests was based on (Leow, 1997;Overstreet, 1998;Nahavandi & Mukundan, 2013d) who ascertained the effectiveness of these kinds of tests in exploring the impact of TE on intake. First, two researcher made parallel versions of a multiple-choice recognition test namely as (A & B), one for pretest and one for posttest, with 30 questions each scoring 1 were developed.…”

“…In summary, most of the conducted researches in the area of TE have been on grammatical forms, reporting a small-sized positive effect, but different researchers have come to different conclusions on the effectiveness of such implicit type of teaching method. Therefore, due to the wide discrepancies in methodological features, reliable comparison across studies has been an extremely difficult task (Nahavandi & Mukundan, 2013d). As such, because of contradictory results, more research in this area especially in EFL context seemed necessary.…”

An assessment of explicit and implicit instruction in the context of the interface debate

“…Textual enhancement, as to the acquisition of the English Past Simple Tense, was also investigated by Nahavandi and Mukundan (2013). The 2 authors combined textual input enhancement with rule presentation in 1 of their 3 groups and reported statistically significant beneficial effects in comparison to a control group.…”