The offline and online effects of processing instruction

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of processing instruction (PI) on the acquisition of accusative case markers in German, focusing on whether PI influences learners’ online processing behaviors. Third and fourth semester L1 English-L2 German learners were divided into two groups: a traditional instruction (TI) group and a PI group. Participants completed offline sentence interpretation and production tasks, as well as a self-paced reading (SPR) task, which provides a detailed investigation of how PI alters processing strategies. Results showed that the PI group outperformed the TI group on the sentence interpretation task and matched their performance on the production task. The SPR task revealed that, in some conditions, the PI group showed increased attention to and processing of accusative case markers after training, while the TI group did not. The results provide some support for the claim that PI is effective because it alters learners’ processing strategies.

The Effects of Processing Instruction and Output-Based Activities on Grammar Learning: The Mediating Role of Working Memory

“…A two-way ANOVA was performed to find the efficacy of PI and output-oriented activities in learning the future tense of English. The obtained statistics indicated that both PI and output groups outperformed research reported earlier (e.g., [13,58,59,62,65,67]). However, Birjandi and Rahemi [62] reported that on tasks requiring interpretation, both PI and output group outperformed the explicit group, however on tasks requiring production, the output group beat both PI and explicit groups.…”

“…According to VanPatten [9], PI is a psycholinguistically inspired strategy to FonF whose primary goal is to teach grammar without abandoning either communication or learningcentered activities and finally leads students to practice grammar. All in all, PI has been proved to be a fruitful teaching strategy [13,44,45].…”

“…Processing teaching tries to change the way L2 learners perceive and process input [11]. PI [9,[11][12][13][14][15][16] is an inputbased approach to grammar education based on input processing theory. Language learners are exposed to input that contains linguistic forms, which is referred to as input processing [11,17].…”

The additive use of prosody and morphosyntax in L2 German

“…Relatively few studies have used cognitive behavioral measures such as self-paced reading (SPR) or eye-tracking to investigate how PI and related instructional interventions change learners' processing strategies, though these methodologies are becoming more common in PI research. As Lee et al (2020) and Henry (2022) discuss, these studies address an increasingly large number of research questions, but many have centered on the effects of PI compared to other instructional trainings (Benati, 2020a(Benati, , 2020bChiuchiù & Benati, 2020;Henry, 2022;Issa & Morgan-Short, 2019;McManus & Marsden, 2017Wong & Ito, 2018) and on aspects of a PI training, such as the delivery of explicit information (EI) or feedback (Dracos & Henry, 2018;Indrarathne & Kormos, 2017;Issa, 2019;Wong & Ito, 2018). While these studies have utilized a variety of methodological approaches, the research has broadly found that PI increases attention and sensitivity to the target forms (Henry, 2022;Issa & Morgan-Short, 2019), reduces the use of nontarget processing strategies (Dracos & Henry, 2018;Wong & Ito, 2018), and/or increases depth or ease of processing (Chiuchiù & Benati, 2020;Lee et al, 2020).…”

“…One recent study by Henry (2022) investigated whether PI pushes learners to process nominative and accusative case markers in German online. Two groups were instructed on German case markers using either PI or a traditional output-focused instruction (TI) and completed an online SPR task.…”