Effects of textual enhancement and task manipulation on L2 learners’ attentional processes and grammatical knowledge development: A mixed methods study

Abstract

This study examined the extent to which textual enhancement and task manipulation affect the learners’ attentional processing and the development of second language (L2) grammatical knowledge. A total of 73 Korean college students read an opinion news article in one of four experimental conditions: (1) textually enhanced, careful reading, (2) textually enhanced, expeditious reading, (3) textually non-enhanced, careful reading, and (4) textually non-enhanced, expeditious reading. For the enhanced conditions, the target L2 construction, i.e. the use of English participle phrases in the restrictive use, was typographically enhanced using a different color. In addition, the reading task was manipulated in terms of the speed and the manner of reading, i.e. careful reading to remember textual information as accurately as possible or expeditious reading to figure out the gist as soon as possible. While reading the article, learners’ eye-movements were recorded with an eye-tracker to measure the allocation of attentional resources as well as reading processes. In addition, stimulated recalls were collected for qualitative analysis of learners’ attentional processes. The results revealed that both textual enhancement and task manipulation had significant effects on the way participants allocated their attentional resources during reading, while it did not affect their knowledge of the target constructions as reflected in their grammaticality judgment scores.