The Effects of Affective Input Enhancement on Second Language Development in Japanese University Students

Abstract

The present study compares the effects of two types of instruction on text comprehension and the learning of the form, meaning, and grammar of English nouns and verbs in a text: affective input enhancement (Affective IE), which enhances the affective processing of the topic of a second language (L2) text before it is read, without focusing on the linguistic aspects of the text (n = 40); and conceptual input enhancement (Conceptual IE), which enhances the conceptual processing of content words in an L2 text before it is read (n = 43). The results showed that (1) the Affective IE group evaluated the text topic more positively than the Conceptual IE group, (2) the Affective IE group outperformed the Conceptual IE group in the free-recall task as an index of text comprehension, (3) the Conceptual IE group outperformed the Affective IE group in the learning of the meaning of nouns in the text, and (4) the Affective IE and Conceptual IE groups were equally effective in facilitating the learning of the noun forms and the form, meaning, and grammar of verbs in the text. These findings suggest that Affective IE facilitates text comprehension and L2 learning.