Textual enhancement of two L2 Arabic forms: a classroom-based study

Abstract

Research on textual enhancement (TE) has given rise to several factors that may play a role in generating learners’ noticing of target forms, one of which pertains to the nature of the target form(s). In particular, results have suggested that learners are more likely to notice more meaning-bearing forms than less meaning-bearing forms. Motivated by such insight, the present study investigated the effects of TE on two Arabic structures: the comparative form (which carries substantive semantic weight), and the dual pronoun (which is mostly grammatical in its function). The results indicated that TE did not play a facilitative role in promoting learners’ noticing of the target forms, and that it actually interfered with learners’ comprehension of the text when targeted at the less meaningful form. Results are discussed with suggestions for future TE research targeting Arabic as a second language.

Keywords:

• focus on form
• SLA
• noticing
• foreign language pedagogy

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Sogang University Research Grant of 2012 (#201210068). An earlier version of this study was presented at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Atlanta, Georgia in March 2010, and at the World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA) held at Beijing Foreign University in August 2011.

Notes

¹The term focus on form originally coined by Long (1991) ‘overtly draws students’ attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication’ (pp. 45–46). This definition has since been stretched to accommodate a variety of techniques including both implicit and explicit focus on form techniques (Doughty & Williams, 1998).

²In the L2 literature, TE is also referred to as input enhancement, visual input enhancement or typographic enhancement.

³Perceptual salience refers to the effect caused by concrete physical attributes of the target structure (Alanen, 1995), and communicative value refers to ‘the relative contribution a form makes to the referential meaning of an utterance and is based on the presence or absence of two features: inherent semantic value and redundancy within the sentence structure’ (VanPatten, 1996, p. 24).

⁴Note however that contradicting findings were reported in a subsequent study (Jourdenais, 1998), which undermine the findings of Jourdenais et al. (1995).

⁵It should be noted that the positive effects may also be attributed to a conflation of two or more focus on form techniques. For example, Leow (2009) divides TE studies into two kinds: those with conflated (i.e. TE as a combination of more than one variable) vs. non conflated (i.e. with TE as the only variable) research designs and argues that the positive results from some studies such as Doughty (1991) and Lee (2007) may be attributed to a number of factors, one of which is additional treatment/instruction.

⁶The lack of effectiveness could very well be attributed to the nature of the task which required meta-linguistic knowledge from the learners.

⁷In a written recall task, students are asked to recall as many ideas as possible from the reading, typically in their L1 lest their comprehension be masked by their limited L2 production (Chang, 2006). It has the advantage of allowing the researcher to measure both the amount of total information and the amount of enhanced information participants could recall on their own (Wong, 2003).

⁸The test included four sections: reading, grammar, vocabulary and writing. The Reading section had 20 questions; the Grammar section had 25 multiple-choice items, 18 production items and five identify-the-error items; the Vocabulary section had 30 items; and the Writing section required the students to write on select topics.

⁹Verbs in Arabic are always inflected for tenses.

¹⁰One of the reviewers suggested providing a third option of ‘I don't remember’ in the True/False test. We agree that providing this option would have reduced the potential of guessing, which we hope to incorporate in further research.

¹¹As noted, we incorporated two intact classes. Therefore, it was not feasible to randomly assign each participant to two different groups for the treatment, especially since the treatment was integrated as part of the regular curriculum.

¹²There were nine idea units that incorporated the comparative form (the first text), and 10 idea units that incorporated the dual pronoun (the second text).

¹³The second task was a free production task in which the learners were asked to produce three sentences using the target form. This resulted in qualitative data (with each student producing 2-3 sentences with varying lengths and varying degrees of accuracy), which did not allow us to run a t-test.

¹⁴In order to ensure that the group differences were due to the experimental treatment rather than pre-existing group differences, we ran ANCOVA tests for different results with the pretest as a covariate. All of the ANCOVA tests confirmed the t-test results, and no correlations were found between the pretest and the comprehension as well as the production tasks, confirming that there was no bias entering into the analysis as a result of pretest differences.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eun Sung Park

Eun Sung Park is an associate professor in the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at Sogang University in Seoul, Korea where she serves as Director of General Education English Programme. Her research interests include learners’ noticing and processing of L2 input, and the interface of theory and practice in language learning and teaching.

Lama Nassif

Lama Nassif is a PhD candidate in the foreign language education programme at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Texas at Austin, USA. She is interested in the interface between second language acquisition and second language pedagogy.