An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Input Enhancement On Noticing And Acquiring English Idioms By High School Students

Recently, researchers have begun to investigate the effects of manipulating and enhancing input, implicitly and explicitly, with the aim of increasing the usefulness for second language acquisition of the input available in the classroom. This study, based on Alanen(1995), Sayuri(2000), Izumi(2002) and Kim(2003), aims to investigate the potentially facilitative effects of different types of Input Enhancement techniques (Elaboration, Textual Enhancement and Reciting) on learners’ noticing as well as acquisition of the target form--the English idioms. Specifically, the study challenges two research questions:1) Does enhanced input show greater power in drawing learners’ attention to and promoting learners’final acquisition of the English idioms than unenhanced input?2) Which technique (Elaboration, Textual Enhancement or Reciting) performs best in drawing learners’attention to and promoting learners’ final acquisition of the English idioms?Those questions were examined in a controlled experimental study in which receiving of Elaboration, exposure to Textual Enhancement and requirement of Reciting were systematically varied.228students from a high school in Hunan province were involved in the experiment and210among them were randomly assigned as three treatment groups and one control group:the Elaboration group was exposed to a text with elaborations of the target idioms; the Textual Enhancement group received bold printed text and the Reciting group was first required to memorize some English idioms, the target idioms included, and then exposed to intact text; the Control group received only intact text without any enhanced type of input.A pilot study, a pretest, a treatment, and three posttests constituted the whole experiment. The raw data collected from the tests were processed by SPSS13.0to examine the issues and the major findings granted by the present study are as follows:1)The three enhancement techniques are all signifiicantly more effective in drawing learners’ noticing and promoting learners’ acquisition of the English idioms than unenhanced instruction;2) Reciting is comparatively more effective than the other two enhancement techniques in both drawing learners’attention on the target form and promoting learners’immediate acquisition of the English idioms; Elaboration is more effective than the other two enhancement techniques in promoting learners’final acquisition of the English idioms; Textual Enhancement, as an external attention-drawing device, is not so effective as has been expected.At the end of the paper, theories on the explicitness of the input, the characteristics of the target item and learners’attentional resources were employed to discuss the results.