The Effects of Visual and Aural Input Enhancement for Korean High School EFL Learners

Abstract

This study compared the two modes of input enhancement, visual and aural, for L2 text comprehension and L2 acquisition. Input enhancement was proposed to overcome L2 learners’ limited attentional capacity for processing language form due to the primacy of meaning by expanding learners’ attention to form of the language. However, in the previous studies, the limited capacity was evidenced in aural mode whereas the effect of input enhancement was examined in written mode. The present study set the modality of input as an independent variable and examined its effect on learning the target form, English future perfect tense. Immediate posttest results from the fifty-five Korean high school students showed that visual input modality was significantly more beneficial than the aural. This between-group difference was not observed in the delayed posttest, though both conditions resulted in improvements in both posttests, in contrast to the test-only control, without inhibiting their text comprehension. The results are interpreted to mean that the enhancement in the aural mode potentially leads to longer-term learning because more attention to form is required in the aural mode in order to hold it in learners’ working memories due to the time pressed processing.