Abstract:
The purpose of the present study was to determine whether noticing through input enhancement had any impact on the acquisition of English conditional sentences in Iranian EFL learners. Two intact classes with 26 female students in each were chosen. A proficiency test administered at the commencement of the study showed that the two groups were homogeneous in terms of their language proficiency. The standardized achievement pretest signified that the two groups were unfamiliar with the target structures prior to the treatment. The study employed a pre test post test non-equivalent groups design with two groups. The Enhanced group (Experimental group) received a set of materials in which the If-clauses were enhanced through enlargement and different combinations of bolding, italics, and underlining; whereas, the Unenhanced group (Control group) received the same set of texts with no enhancement on If-clauses. The independent t-test computed between the means of the two groups showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the performances of the two groups on the achievement post test. Besides, a retrospection questionnaire for operationalizing noticing was used after the treatment. The analysis of the students’ answers showed that input enhancement had helped the participants in the experimental group learn the conditional sentences.
Machine summary:
ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to determine whether noticing through input enhancement had any impact on the acquisition of English conditional sentences in Iranian EFL learners.
The analysis of the students’ answers showed that input enhancement had helped the participants in the experimental group learn the conditional sentences.
The center of his discussion is how instruction facilitates the process of selection of input by L2 learners (Sharwood Smith, 1993) and explores the possible effects of focusing learners’ attention to specific aspects of the input, which could In a study, Covitt (as cited in Norris, 2003) proved that oversimplified explanations, form, meaning, and time-tense relationship are the serious problems relevant to learning the conditional sentences.
Research findings (White, 1998; Doughty & Williams, 1998) prove this type of input enhancement to be one of the most implicit ways of drawing the learners’ attention to form especially when the structures have a strong semantic or communicative value in them.
Conditional sentences are among the most difficult structures for second language learners to master because the grammatical tense of the verb does not always match the meaning (Chou, 2000).
For example, in completing one of the tasks, the learners read a series of statements and Noticing through Input Enhancement: Does it Affect Learning of the Conditionals?
The finding also supports other input enhancement studies that have reported the ability of the learners in recognizing and producing forms correctly when their attention is focused on a particular linguistic item while doing communicative activities (White, Spada, Lightbown, & Ranta, 1991; White, 1998).