Input processing

The importance of input has been a broadly documented concept in the field of second or foreign language acquisition. However, kinds of input and ways of its presentation are among the controversial issues in L2 classroom research. Therefore, this study was designed to compare the effects of three kinds of input-based instruction on intake and acquisition of the English causative structures by Iranian EFL learners. A total of 105 university students in four intact classes were randomly assigned to four different conditions: processing instruction (PI), textual input enhancement (TE), consciousness-raising (C-R), and control (CO). A pretest/posttest (immediate and delayed) design was used, where participants’ ability to interpret and produce the target structure was assessed through administering a multiple choice interpretation test and a sentence-level production test. Moreover, a grammaticality judgment test was run to assess the amount of intake. Results revealed that learners in the PI group significantly outperformed learners in the other groups on both immediate/delayed production posttests. The findings also indicated that, C-R group could not retain the significant effect of instruction on delayed production posttest and TE tasks were not effective in improving the learners’ production of the target structure. Moreover, the PI group outperformed the other groups on grammaticality judgment test too. Based on these findings, we can conclude that PI which encompasses the most outstanding features of both focus on form and meaning instruction might be a more effective approach in helping EFL learners to acquire the target grammatical forms.

Second language acquisition (SLA) research suggests that learners differ in the extent to which they can direct their attention to the meaning and form of the input. Among various factors responsible for this discrepancy, learning style by itself or along with other factors might influence the process, yet its impact has rarely been addressed in empirical studies. The present study aimed to investigate how learners with different learning styles allocate their attention to form and content when exposed to different input modalities. For this purpose, 73 male and female university students from three intact groups, participated in the research. First, the Ehrman & Leaver (E& L) Construct Questionnaire was implemented to determine the participants' learning styles. Then, the reconstructive Elicited Imitation (REI) Tests comprising a reading and a listening section were administered to specify how learning styles might allocate their attention if exposed to different modalities. Moreover, to obtain further evidence regarding how they would attend to the form and content, a structured interview was employed. The analysis of Chi-square showed that the atomistic learners processed the linguistic features more effectively while the holistic learners focused more on the content. The results further indicated that both types of learners had difficulty processing oral input, although the atomistic learners outperformed the holistic learners in attending to the formal features. Finally it was revealed that learning style is a crucial factor, directing the EFL learners how to divide their attention between form and meaning, but input modalities can only influence the process.