Validity of pushed output of English determiners during text-based online chat.

Abstract

This study was motivated by the potential use of text-based online chat to teach English determiners. The study aimed to investigate whether students, when asked to, could attend to and improve their use of English determiners during chat sessions. Students in the experimental group were asked to use English determiners, as correctly as possible, during the chat session. Thirty eight students―20 and 18 in the experimental/control groups respectively―from two Advanced English Conversation classes participated in a one-hour chat session, which was followed by answering a survey that asked how they felt about using the target items consciously. The results showed that there were no significant differences in the overall ratio of deletions of total errors and the ratio of errors to total head nouns between the two groups. Many of the students in both groups reported they had difficulty focusing on communication while consciously using the target item. Yet, some reported they would not mind using determiners consciously if required for educational purposes. The findings suggest that creating a chat environment in which students can discuss with each other specific target L2 features, using meta-language, could potentially improve the use of the L2 features.