Comparative Effectiveness of Input-based Instructions on L2 Grammar Knowledge: Textual Enhancement and Processing Instruction

Abstract

This study investigated comparative effectiveness of Textual Enhancement (TE) and Processing Instruction (PI) on the acquisition of English simple present tense third person singular form by elementary level EFL young learners. To this end, 43 seventh grade secondary school learners were conveniently selected for the study and randomly distributed into two experimental groups: TE (n = 21), PI (n = 22). Each group received different instructions (namely TE or PI) during two consecutive regular classroom hours (80 minutes in total). The learners took a pretest one week before the instructions, an immediate posttest one day after the instructions, and finally a delayed posttest after four weeks. According to the results of an interpretation task and two production tasks, both types of instructions helped the participants to increase their performance on the interpretation task. However, the results from production tasks showed that both input groups could not improve their production scores as much as expected from the literature. Although the study was conducted with limited number of students and without a control group, its results still suggest that English language teachers can use input-based instruction to help especially young learners to comprehend notoriously difficult structures as in this study.