| Anaphor resolution is a common linguistic phenomenon in discourse construction and an important means of constructing discourse cohesion to avoid repetition and make sentences and texts more concise.To a great extent,learners'sufficient anaphor learning and comprehension is determined by the explicitness of antecedent-anaphor relation.Therefore,many researchers have been looking into the function of textual enhancement(TE),which aims to draw learners' attention to linguistic forms through highlighting the exterior shape of input.So far,however,previous studies of TE have produced inconsistent results.This study aims to investigate whether TE can promote English learners' anaphor resolution and reading comprehension performance,thereby exploring the interaction among learners' attention,reading comprehension,anaphor inference.Thus,the current study meets the need to reexamine the effects of TE in English learning.On the basis of the Input Hypothesis and the Noticing Hypothesis,this study aims at answering the following three questions:1.What are the effects of TE on learners'English anaphor resolution performance?2.What are the effects of TE on learners' English reading comprehension-3.What is the correlation between learners'English anaphor resolution and reading comprehension when target forms are enhanced?The subjects for this study are 104 senior two students in the researcher's internship school in Shenzhen who were divided into an experimental group and control group respectively.First,a comprehensive reading proficiency test was implemented to assess all subjects' reading proficiency.Second,during the experiment,all subjects read four ordinary different texts with the same language level.After that,a pretest including 16-item multiple choice tasks and 20 reference identification tasks based on reading materials was conducted in two groups.Third,another four texts were given for the experimental group with textual enhancement and those for the control group were without textual enhancement.They are required to read and finish the same task form as in the pretest.At last,a semi-structured interview was carried out to get the participants'feedback towards the effects of TE.The study produces the following results.Firstly,TE has positive effects on learners' anaphor resolution.The experimental group outperformed the control group in anaphor resolution scores but not in single noun anaphor resolution.Secondly,TE has positive effects on reading comprehension of learners.Under the condition of TE?form and meaning are integrated.Thirdly,a positive correlation was found between anaphor resolution and reading comprehension,and the correlation in experimental class was higher than that of the control class,demonstrating that textual enhancement exerts a positive effect on the relevance of anaphor resolution and reading comprehension achievement.Based on the results,this study gives pedagogical implications.TE promoted the degree of explicitness in antecedence-anaphor relationship and raised learners'awareness of target forms.At first,TE used by teachers can help learners to make hypotheses about the relationship between the function and form of antecedent-anaphor.Then,because of the correlation existing between anaphor(local)and reading(global)comprehension,learners are advised to adopt top-down and bottom-up reading methods simultaneously to achieve a more effective reading comprehension.Moreover,it is helpful in content-based language teaching where focusing on both form and meaning is more effective.At last,not all targeted forms can be comprehended by learners.Thus,implicit enhancement and teachers'explicit explanations should be combined in language teaching. |
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