The Effect Of Output Task On The EFL Learners’ Noticing And Acquisition Of English Hypothetical Conditional

According to the Output Hypothesis proposed by Swain (1995), output has thenoticing/triggering function, which means that learners may notice a gap betweentheir interlanguage and target language in the output process and then notice therelated linguistic forms in the target language. This process is said to facilitatelanguage acquisition. Although the noticing function of output has been investigatedby a number of researchers in the field of second language acquisition, controversiesstill exist on whether output can promote noticing and whether noticing can lead toacquisition.The present study investigated the effect of output on noticing and acquisitionof the English hypothetical conditional through text reconstruction task. This studyattempts to answer the following three questions:1. Does the output task (text reconstruction) promote EFL learners’ noticing ofEnglish hypothetical conditional?2. Does the output task (text reconstruction) improve EFL learners’ acquisitionof English hypothetical conditional?2.1Does the output task (text reconstruction) have a short term effect onimproving EFL learners’ acquisition of English hypothetical conditional?2.2Does the output task (text reconstruction) have a long term effect onimproving EFL learners’ acquisition of English hypothetical conditional?3. What are EFL learners’ opinions about the effects of output on noticing andacquisition of English hypothetical conditional?The subjects for the experiment were60freshmen of Railway Engineeringmajors enrolled in Nanjing Institute of Railway Technology. They were divided intotwo groups: the experimental group which accomplished text reconstruction task and the control group that engaged in text comprehension task. Each group had30students. All subjects were administrated pretest, training and treatment,questionnaire and posttest. Both Independent-samples t-test and paired-samples t-testwere adopted in analyzing the quantitative data. Qualitative data coming fromanswers of the questionnaire were used as explanation and supplementary for thequantitative data.The major findings of this study are summarized as follows:First, both EG (experimental group) and CG (control group) showed increasednoticing of target linguistic form through the two underlining tasks. Although thenoticing difference between the two groups did not demonstrate statisticallysignificant, the results of the questionnaire revealed that the EG participants noticedthe target linguistic form mostly because they noticed the gap between theirinterlanguage and the target language while CG participants noticed the form mostbecause of its high occurrence frequency and saliency in the input material. As aresult, the EG participants experienced higher level of noticing than CG participants.It can be safely drawn from above that text reconstruction output task promotes EFLlearners’ noticing of English hypothetical conditional.Second, participants in EG incorporated more correct English hypotheticalconditional items into their second output task and they also showed a significantimprovement on the posttest scores than CG did. These suggested that the textreconstruction output task can improve EFL learners’ acquisition of Englishhypothetical conditional.Third, most participants held the view that text reconstruction output task hadthe advantage to prompt them to notice the gap between their interlanguage andtarget language, which urged them to notice the target linguistic form in subsequentinput. And this process eventually benefited their acquisition of the target form.The results of the study have both theoretical and pedagogical significance.First of all, they confirm Swain’s Output Hypothesis in that output can promptnoticing on the target linguistic form and finally facilitate SLA. To some extent,Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis is not confirmed in the present study, for the noticing didn’t lead to acquisition of target linguistic form in control group of the presentstudy. In addition, they provide pedagogical implications in that output productionshould be taken into consideration as an essential factor and the proper output tasksshould be designed in prompting SLA.