Form-meaning Connections Research Articles

Input Processing and Processing Instruction: Definitions and Issues

Input Processing (IP) proposed by VanPatten (1993), was innovated based on Krashen’s (1982) input hypothesis. In IP model, principles are stated that describe how learners either miss grammatical markers in the input or how they get them wrong (VanPatten, 2002b). Based on this model, learners process input for meaning before form. Processing Instruction (PI), an explicit focus on form that is informed by the model of IP, is a practical solution to IP model. The goal of PI is to help L2 learners derive richer intake from input by having them engage in structured input activities that push them away from the strategies they normally use to make form-meaning connections (Wong, 2004). This article intends to study the definitions of IP and PI as well the issues of IP and PI, including the principles of IP, features and goal of PI, and input used in PI (Structured input activities), and then to introduce difference between the terms IP and PI.

Tracking the changes: vocabulary acquisition in the study abroad context

Empirical evidence suggests that the study abroad experience accelerates growth in global vocabulary knowledge. The exact nature of this growth is rarely reported, however, and there is little documented evidence to indicate whether it is linear or uneven, whether the speed of growth is constant or changing, or whether the study abroad context favours the acquisition of certain aspects of vocabulary knowledge over others. This paper introduces and evaluates a method of tracking incremental changes in vocabulary knowledge during a year of overseas study. Lexical knowledge is elicited through a word association task completed by the learner at six-weekly intervals. Responses to the task, although not formally constrained, are dependent on the conceptual and lexical associations of the test-taker. Data sets are analysed using a word-knowledge framework, and findings reveal a gradual increase in some aspects of vocabulary knowledge (the number of collocations and native speaker-like associations), but striking inconsistencies over time in others (e.g. word form, form-meaning connections, orthography). The study uses an innovative application of an investigative tool to capture stages in the micro-development of the lexicon, thus exposing the complex and multi-dimensional nature of lexical acquisition.

Form-meaning Connections in Second Language Vocabulary: Reexamining the Same-translation Effect

Form-meaning Connections in Second Language Vocabulary: Reexamining the Same-translation Effect

Research in Language-Literature Instruction: Meeting the Call for Change?

The purpose of this review is to assess whether recent scholarship on language-literature instruction—the deliberate integration of language development and literary study at all levels of the foreign language curriculum—within the context of U.S. institutions of higher education reflects shifts in thinking regarding the role of literature in foreign language curricula. These shifts have come in response to the 2007 Report of the Modern Language Association Ad Hoc Committee on Foreign Languages, which recommended replacing the traditional two-tiered program structure with more coherent curricula that merge language and content, and to the general questioning of communicative language teaching as a viable method for language instruction and adequate preparation for advanced-level work in a foreign language. Current approaches to language-literature instruction and foreign language curriculum design favor multimodal language development that places equal importance on oral and written language and interpretative interaction with literature to construct textual meaning and establish form-meaning connections. This review surveys empirical and classroom practice research on literature in language courses and language in literature courses and concludes with a consideration of larger curricular issues and areas for future research.

THE IMPLICIT LEARNING OF MAPPINGS BETWEEN FORMS AND CONTEXTUALLY DERIVED MEANINGS

The traditional implicit learning literature has focused primarily on the abstraction of statistical regularities in form-form connections. More attention has been recently directed toward the implicit learning of form-meaning connections, which might be crucial in the acquisition of natural languages. The current article reports evidence for implicit learning of a mapping between a novel set of determiners and thematic roles, obtained using a newly developed reaction time methodology. The results conclude that contextually derived form-meaning connections might be implicitly learned.

Scaffolding in the Second Language Learning of Target Forms in Peer Interaction

This study draws on sociocultural theory to explore how adult EFL learners interact with each other in learning target form in collaborative task performance. It investigates the features of scaffolding in peer collaboration in which a group of four Chinese undergraduate students are engaged in a writing task in an English enhancement course at a university in Hong Kong. The study also examines how the scaffolding categories affect the learners' production of appropriate grammatical forms. The findings advocate the presence of the teacher (or tutor) to direct learners' attention to important form-meaning connections in L2 pedagogical group activities due to the limitations of peer interaction.

Rehearsing, conversing, working it out

This paper reports on a study of peer interaction in ten foreign language (FL) classes, six secondary and four primary, over a period of four months. The focus of this paper is the nature of peer interaction, including the purposes of second language use, and language choice. The data, comprising observation, audio and video recordings of five lessons from each of the classes, and interviews with learners, indicates multiple uses peers make of their time together, and different potential outcomes for learning. The findings suggest second language use varies in purpose and includes both formulaic pattern practice and communication of new information or ideas, and at the same time creates a context for the co-construction of language and a grappling with form-meaning connections in the target language. By exploring peer interaction as a context for second language use and development, this research brings together different perspectives on interaction and second language acquisition and builds on recent calls for a greater awareness of the interdependence of social and cognitive factors in the process of language learning.

Rehearsing, conversing, working it out

This paper reports on a study of peer interaction in ten foreign language (FL) classes, six secondary and four primary, over a period of four months. The focus of this paper is the nature of peer interaction, including the purposes of second language use, and language choice. The data, comprising observation, audio and video recordings of five lessons from each of the classes, and interviews with learners, indicates multiple uses peers make of their time together, and different potential outcomes for learning. The findings suggest second language use varies in purpose and includes both formulaic pattern practice and communication of new information or ideas, and at the same time creates a context for the co-construction of language and a grappling with form-meaning connections in the target language. By exploring peer interaction as a context for second language use and development, this research brings together different perspectives on interaction and second language acquisition and builds on recent calls for a greater awareness of the interdependence of social and cognitive factors in the process of language learning.

Sociocultural perspectives on teacher language awareness in form-focused EFL classroom instruction

A teacher's language awareness (TLA) is generally believed to have a significant impact on grammar or form-focused (FonF) instruction. TLA has traditionally been assumed to be a cognitive construct. A more recent view on TLA argues for its sociocultural significance in second language learning. This paper builds on this recent view and attempts to illuminate the need to incorporate sociocultural perspectives on TLA in FonF instruction. Through a micro-analysis of four naturally occurring FonF instructional episodes from a Hong Kong EFL classroom, we identify problems with the teacher's form-focused instructional discourse and discuss how these problems may have revealed the teacher's lack of awareness of the sociocultural nature of form-meaning connections, the role of learners’ previous embodied experiences as meaning-makers, and of the need to establish intersubjective understanding with the learners about the multiple texts and contexts that the learners might be drawing on in the meaning-making process. Implications will be drawn with a view to facilitating EFL teachers’ form-focused instructional discourse.

A balancing act: how can intelligent computer-generated feedback be provided in learner-to-learner interactions?

Task-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) may represent an optimal psycholinguistic environment for form-meaning connections, but learners do not receive feedback from a trusted authority. Intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) provides feedback, but the encouragement of communicative interaction remains largely unexplored. To combine the benefits of ICALL and CMC, we are designing a parser-based system that provides feedback on particle usage for first-year L2 Korean learners while they chat in CMC. Both to facilitate the use of a new orthography by beginning learners and to make processing feasible for the ICALL system, we guide the content of the activity by using picture-based information-gap tasks and a game record, and we control the range of allowable learner input by using a word bank. These constraints enable the system to address L2 errors in meaningful, goal-driven interactions.

Visual Input Enhancement via Essay Coding Results in Deaf Learners' Long-Term Retention of Improved English Grammatical Knowledge

This study explored the efficacy of visual input enhancement, specifically essay enhancement, for facilitating deaf college students' improvement in English grammatical knowledge. Results documented students' significant improvement immediately after a 10-week instructional intervention, a replication of recent research. Additionally, the results of delayed assessment documented students' significant retention of that improvement five and a half months beyond the instructional intervention period. Essay enhancement served to highlight, via a coding procedure, students' successful and unsuccessful production of discourse-required target grammatical structures. The procedure converted students' written communicative output into enhanced input for inducing noticing of grammatical form and, through essay revision, establishing form-meaning connections leading to acquisition. With its optimal design characteristics supported by theoretical and empirical research, essay enhancement is a highly effective methodology that can be easily implemented as primary or supplementary English instruction for deaf students. The results of this study hold great promise for facilitating deaf students' English language and literacy development and have broad implications for second-language research, teaching, and learning.

Developing Content and Form: Encouraging Evidence From Italian Content-Based Instruction

Swain (1985) pointed out the need for increased modified output in the classroom in order to encourage learners to engage in more syntactic processing and, thus, make more form-meaning connections. Research in content-based instruction (CBI) (Musumeci, 1996; Pica, 2002) has revealed few occasions of pushed modified output from learners. Therefore, one questions whether CBI classes are effective in promoting and developing not only content knowledge, but also form–function abilities, specifically in the expressive skills. Second language (L2) learners from a 3rd semester university-level content-based geography course (N= 43) completed 2 (or 3) production tasks at the beginning and end of the regular semester. The findings revealed that learners made significant improvements in both content knowledge and functional linguistic abilities. However, it is possible that that latter still has room for improvement.

Exploring Input Processing in the Classroom: An Experimental Comparison of Processing Instruction and Enriched Input

The research reported here tests the claim made in the Processing approach to second language (L2) acquisition that interpreting the meaning of language form is essential for learning. This claim has been put forward as an underlying part of the pedagogical package known as Processing Instruction (PI) (VanPatten, 1996, 2002a, 2004). Two experiments compared PI with a type of Enriched Input (operationalized as the same brief grammar explanation as in PI, followed by equal numbers of exemplars of the target features but where attention to the forms or their meanings was not necessary to the task). In a pretest, posttest, delayed posttest design, first language (L1) English speakers' oral and written interpretation and production of L2 French verb inflections for tense, number, and person were examined. The impact of proficiency level on the necessity of making integrated form-meaning connections was also examined, by carrying out the same experiment with two groups at different levels of proficiency. Results from both experiments were generally compatible with the Processing claim earlier, although contextual- and measurement-dependent factors affected the results from the writing and oral measures in the second experiment.

LEARNING WITHOUT AWARENESS

Two experiments examined the learning of form-meaning connections under conditions where the relevant forms were noticed but the critical aspects of meaning were not. Miniature noun class systems were employed, and the participants were told that the choice of determiner in noun phrases depended on whether the object was “near” or “far” from the subject of the sentence. What they were not told was that the choice of determiner also depended on the animacy of the noun. Most participants remained unaware of this correlation during the training and test tasks; yet when faced with a choice between two determiners for a noun, they chose the one that was appropriate to the noun's animacy at significantly above-chance levels, even though that combination had never been encountered during training. This ability to generalize provided evidence of learning form-meaning connections without awareness. In both experiments, there was a correlation between generalization test performance and knowledge of languages that encode grammatical gender. This points to the importance of prior knowledge in implicit learning.Many thanks to Ronald Leow, Daphnee Simard, and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

A Comparison of Output Interventions and Un-enhanced Reading Conditions on Vocabulary Acquisition and Text Comprehension

This investigation assessed whether L2 readers' sensitivity towards a new lexical form is heightened if they are repeatedly pushed to produce output and are immediately provided with relevant input in input-output cycles. In addition, the study sought to assess how these interventions influence text comprehension. Fourth-semester learners read three texts, with four target words each, under the following conditions: (a) cued-output task, (b) self-selected output task, and (c) un-enhanced (control) reading. Results showed that four input-output cycles did not contribute to retain more or more robust form-meaning connections (FMCs) than the normal reading condition. In all three conditions, FMCs varied in strength and completeness, requiring different cues for retrieval. The two input-output tasks affected text comprehension differently. The self-selected output task resulted in text comprehension similar to the un-enhanced reading; the cued-output task seemed to interfere with text comprehension.

THE EFFECTS OF TOPIC FAMILIARITY, MODE, AND PAUSING ON SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS' COMPREHENSION AND FOCUS ON FORM

Research in first language and second language (L2) comprehension has demonstrated that both learner and input variables contribute to the ease with which a message is understood. Questions remain, however, as to how these variables affect the way L2 learners process linguistic form during comprehension. This study examines how one learner variable (topic familiarity) and two input variables (mode and pausing) affect learners' comprehension and their processing of a new morphological form (the Spanish future tense) in the input. Two hundred sixty-six participants in an accelerated beginning Spanish course either read or listened to a short narrative in Spanish on either a familiar topic or an unfamiliar one. Additionally, half of the listening groups encountered 3-second pauses between each sentence. After listening to or reading the passages, the participants performed two comprehension tasks (recall protocol and multiple-choice test) and two form-assessment tasks (form-recognition task and tense identification/translation). The results revealed that, although all three variables affected learners' comprehension, only mode affected learners' processing future tense morphology.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference Form-Meaning Connections in Second Language Acquisition held in Chicago in February, 2002. This paper is based on my doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am extremely grateful to Bill VanPatten for his guidance during the entire process of the research project as well as to James F. Lee, Diane Musumeci, Alice Omaggio Hadley, and Anna Maria Escobar for their feedback and encouragement. I also wish to thank the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their insightful and critical comments. All errors and omissions are, of course, my own.

A Comparison of Output Interventions and Un-enhanced Reading Conditions on Vocabulary Acquisition and Text Comprehension

This investigation assessed whether L2 readers' sensitivity towards a new lexical form is heightened if they are repeatedly pushed to produce output and are immediately provided with relevant input in input-output cycles. In addition, the study sought to assess how these interventions influence text comprehension. Fourth-semester learners read three texts, with four target words each, under the following conditions: (a) cued-output task, (b) self-selected output task, and (c) un-enhanced (control) reading. Results showed that four input-output cycles did not contribute to retain more or more robust form-meaning connections (FMCs) than the normal reading condition. In all three conditions, FMCs varied in strength and completeness, requiring different cues for retrieval. The two input-output tasks affected text comprehension differently. The self-selected output task resulted in text comprehension similar to the un-enhanced reading; the cued-output task seemed to interfere with text comprehension.

Comprehension and Production Processes in Second Language Learning: In Search of the Psycholinguistic Rationale of the Output Hypothesis

The output hypothesis claims that production makes the learner move from 'semantic processing' prevalent in comprehension to more 'syntactic processing' that is necessary for second language development. The purpose of this article is to illuminate the psycholinguistic mechanisms that underlie this claim by reviewing previous literature in language acquisition and cognitive psychology on the comprehension and production processes in language use and language learning. In speech comprehension, the interactive and compensatory nature of the human comprehension system can both promote comprehension and hinder language development for second language learners, unless the learners are somehow pushed to attend to form-meaning connections during input processing. In elucidating the mechanisms by which output promotes SLA, it is argued, by drawing on Levelt's (1989, 1992, 1993) speech production model, that the processes of grammatical encoding during production and monitoring to check the matching of the communicative intention and the output enable language learners to assess the possibilities and limitations of their interlanguage capability. This may, under certain conditions, serve as an internal priming device for consciousness raising for the learners, which in turn creates an optimal condition for language learning to take place. It is argued that understanding of the constraints and potentials for learning created by input and output processing is crucial for devising pedagogical tasks that effectively promote interlanguage development.

The effectiveness of spontaneous attention to form

This descriptive study explores episodes of classroom interaction in which there is unplanned attention to form. Data consist of periodic recordings of learners in intensive English classes over a period of 8 weeks, as well as periodic testing of forms that emerged as a focus of attention during these episodes. Analysis of the data points to a strong connection between attention to form and subsequent use of those forms and indicates that this connection is affected by proficiency level. The study also addresses the relationship between roles of the participants in the episodes and the subsequent retention and use of the forms in focus, specifically: 1. initiator of episode: self vs. other learner vs. teacher 2. provider of new input generated during the episode: self vs. other learner vs. teacher Results suggest that the participants in episodes that focus on form all have an important role to play in promoting the establishment of form-meaning connections.

Input Processing and Grammar Instruction in Second Language Acquisition

This book provides an alternative to the debate in second language acquisition theory and teaching. Accepting that language acquisition is at least partially input dependent, the author asks how grammatical form is processed in the input by second language learners and is it possible to assist this in ways that help the learner to create richer grammatical intake. He answers these questions and explains why traditional paradigms are not psycholinguistically motivated. Drawing on research from both first and second language acquisition, he outlines a model for input in second language acquisition that helps to account for how learners construct grammatical systems. He then uses this model to motivate processing instruction, a type of grammar instruction in which learners are engaged in making form-meaning connections during particular input activities.