A Study Of The Primary And Transfer-of-Training Effects Of Processing Instruction

The importance of language input has always been the focus of researchers in the field of second language acquisition.The “Input Hypothesis” proposed by Krashen(1985)considered the sufficient comprehensible input as an essential prerequisite for language acquisition.The “Noticing Hypothesis” put forward by Schmidt(1990)laid stress on the importance of awareness in the process of language acquisition.Based on “Input Hypothesis” and “Noticing Hypothesis”,processing instruction was proposed by VanPatten(1993).It focused on learners’ language input in order to alter learners’ input processing strategies and help learners to make a correct connection between meaning and form.Since processing instruction has been put forward,related researches emerged in an endless stream.However,most previous studies mainly focused on the primary effect of processing instruction with relative lack of studies on transfer-of-training effects.In addition,native languages of participants in previous studies were strongly related to Romanic branch and the participants were mostly middle school students or college students.However,few studies have been conducted in which the mother tongue is Chinese and the participants are primary school students.Therefore,this thesis attempts to study the primary effect and transfer-of-training effects of processing instruction with primary school students in China as participants so as to test the effectiveness of PI in primary school foreign language grammar teaching in China.The thesis mainly studies the primary effect of processing instruction on the acquisition of English-ing form,the secondary transfer-of-training effect on English-ed form and the cumulative transfer-of-training effect on English passive voice.52 primary school students in Grade Six were involved in a four-week teaching experiment.Participants were randomized into processing instruction group and control group.Participants in processing instruction group received processing instruction on v-ing form while control group received traditional instruction.One week before the instructional treatment,pretests were conducted to all participants.Teaching experiment was performed in two consecutive lessons.Immediate posttests were done after the teaching experiment at once and the delayed posttests were done two weeks after immediate posttests.All tests consisted of two kinds of tasks,interpretation tasks and production tasks.Main findings of the study are as follows,firstly,in the aspect of the primary effect of the-ing form,processing instruction group was superior to the control group for interpretation tasks.Two groups made great progress for production tasks without significant differences.Secondly,in the aspect of secondary transfer-of-training effect on the-ed form,processing instruction group was superior to control group both for interpretation tasks and production tasks.Thirdly,in the aspect of cumulative transfer-of-training effect on the passive voice,processing instruction group was superior to control group both for interpretation tasks and production tasks as well.The results show that processing instruction can optimize the learners’ processing strategies by improving the learners’ attention to the linguistic form and it is an effective grammar teaching method.