Effects Of Input Enhancement On Adult EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Acquisition

Input enhancement, in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), is a device topromote learners’ attention to input. Put forward by Sharwood Smith, this construct is to makelinguistic forms salient via external techniques to promote learners’ attention to it. This thesiswill take input enhancement as the focus, and examine its effects on adult EFL (English as aForeign Language) learners’ vocabulary acquisition in the framework of Noticing Hypothesisand Focus on Form. Three research questions are posed:(1) Does input enhancement promotelearners’ attention to the target forms in the input?(2) Does input enhancement facilitatelearners’ understanding of the meaning and usage of the target forms in the input?(3) Doesinput enhancement distract learners’ attention from reading comprehension? The participantsin this study are52freshmen majoring in English from a University in Suihua. The data aregathered through questionnaires and two different forms of tests of experiment-control-groupdesign. The data collected are analyzed through SPSS16.0. The results revealed that:(1) Inputenhancement can promote learners’ attention to the target forms in the input to some extent.(2)Input enhancement is not found to be facilitative to learners’ understanding of the meaningand usage of the target forms in the input.(3) Input enhancement does not distract learners’attention from reading comprehension significantly. These results are discussed by the authorfrom both input features and learners’ internal factors. Additionally, theoretical and practicalimplications of this study are offered.