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Among those who study the acquisition of second language, be they world
language teachers or SLA researchers, there is academic agreement that input is
necessary for growth in and acquisition of a second language. What is debated is whether
educators can enhance that input and increase what learners actually take in and process.
Can input be enhanced in textual, aural or visual articulation, so as to bring a learners
attention to the desired form? SLA researchers have not been able to come to an
agreement as to whether input enhancement is truly effective for learners, as results have
been varied in studies that have studied enhancement alone. Ultimately, what has been
shown is that input enhancement is most effective when supported by explicit instruction.
Input is the language a learner is exposed to - be it in written, aural, or visual
form. The part of input that a learner takes in and processes fully is referred to as intake.
(Gass, 2013) The goal of effective language instructors is to provide input that can be
processed and integrated into the learners developing language, thus becoming intake.
Schmidts noticing hypothesis gives educators and researchers the first step toward that
goal - for input to be processed for acquisition by second language (L2) learners, it
must first be noticed, (as cited in Lee & Huang, 2008, p. 308). The aim of input
enhancement is to have students notice the form on which instructors or researchers are
asking learners to focus. To do this, input enhancement can take many forms - text
enhancement, such as bolding, italics, underlining, or color coding, is often most
associated with the term. Additionally, vocal modulation, whether simply while speaking
or using recordings, use of captions in videos, or, use of photographs in storytelling to
enhance comprehension as in the CI methodology, all can be forms of input
enhancement. Even a recast, a simple rephrase of a student mistake can be a type of
enhancement. Essentially any strategy that instructors use to focus student attention on
form while in the target language is a form of enhancement. At issue is whether these
enhancements, without supporting instruction, assist student acquisition.
Several studies have been conducted that illustrate why explicit instruction is
necessary to support input enhancement. In 1998, White used classes of Qubcois
immersion students with extensive reading and listening. Students were placed into one
of three groups - enhanced, unenhanced or control. Enhanced students received texts with
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the featured forms, the possessive his and her, that were underlined, bold, and italicized.
Additionally, these students received instruction on the text, as well as additional pleasure
reading time. Unenhanced students received no such additional instruction. The study
found both the enhanced and unenhanced groups used the forms more than the control
group, but did not make significant growth.
According to Kubata (2000), it could be due to the grammatical difficulty of this
particular topic, that only explicit instruction can provide maximum benefit to the
learners (p. 49). Certainly, this is a complicated grammatical feature in French, where
both his and her, different possessives in English, are the same word in French, only
changing based on the gender of the object being possessed. While students in the
enhanced group were given that brief explanation along with examples, the unenhanced
group did not. All of the underlining and italicized words in the world could not clarify
gendered nouns if students do not understand that this word changes based on possession,
gender and quantity. This is confusion that a bit of explicit explanation can clarify and a
classroom teacher could move right back into the target language.
Moroishis study again divided students into three groups, this time using a group
using explicit instruction, another using implicit, and a control group. Each group was
pre-tested and asked to complete five tasks. The instruction of the explicit group was
given grammar explanation, listening and reading comprehension and example sentences.
The implicit group was given the same, without grammar explanation. However, the
implicit group received text enhancement in the reading comprehension of all of the
target forms. The control group was given no instruction. All groups were given two
post-tests, one immediately following instruction and one test nine weeks later. Both the
explicit and implicit groups showed growth with the use of the target forms, though the
implicit group did not perform as well as the explicit. The explicit group performed well
on all five tasks on the second post-test, while the implicit group maintained knowledge
on four of the post-tests, save for the oral storytelling portion.
Kubata (2000) found, through this and several other studies, that implicit text
enhancement seems to work for the items which have been already introduced but not
yet been fully learned, while it seemed to have less impact on the newly introduced items
(p. 60). It is added that explicit grammar instruction seems to facilitate the most
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learning, especially with more complex topics. Kubata notes it is also possible that the the
longer period of time spent on instruction, in Moroishis study the explicit group had four
seventy-five minute sessions, was important to improved performance.
Technology may well play into certain aspects of input enhancement as devices
become more ubiquitous in classrooms. Reinders and Cho undertook an interesting study
in 2010 through extensive listening. Intermediate-level English language students were
given an audiobook to download on their mobile phones and given one week to listen.
They were simply told to listen one time through. Their teachers had chosen a form and
manipulated the audio track, increasing the volume 20% each time that form appeared in
the text. The idea was to then come together as a class and find if students had noticed the
form and shown growth. Unfortunately, the study was not successful, as many students
either did not complete the assignment, listened to the book several times or had
previously read it in either English or their native Korean.
This lack of clear explicit instruction on the form by Reinders and Cho is an issue
that has come up in several other studies, such as Lee (2007), and was remarked on by
Winke (2013).
It could also be that form learning may not have occurred in this study because
the learners were not told to pay attention to the forms (e.g., as a teacher in a
classroom may do); that is, they were not provided with any explicit instruction
on the form, which, as Alanen (1995), Kim (2006), and Martinez-Flor and Soler
(2007) found, affects the impact enhancement has on learning. (p. 341)
Had Reinders and Cho provided clear instructions, they may have ended with
better results. Input enhancement is a classroom tool and though it is used in research, it
is best examined when used in that context with those conditions.
While this certainly was not a successful study, in that it did not have results to
speak of, it did bring up interesting points. The teachers found that students were more
likely to engage with the extensive listening, given the ability to use their technology to
interact and control said interaction with their L2. They found anecdotal evidence that
students motivation was increased and their affective filter was lowered given the
personal control over and the vehicle of the input.
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SLA theories and the researchers who study them generally do not concern
themselves with the work of the classroom. However, input enhancement is a tool used
by teachers. It is not language in its truest sense, more akin to foreigner talk than native
speech. (Gass, 219) Standard SLA theories and research cannot apply, but rather must
adapt to help, rather than inform. Winke (2013), discussing the results of not using
explicit instruction in a study, best sums up the importance of the use of explicit
instruction with input enhancement.
I now believe that future input enhancement research must be conducted in
conditions more representative of how teachers use input enhancement: with
reading directions, reading-task goals, and preemptive or reactive (post-reading)
explicit, directed instruction on the enhanced forms. I would argue that it is rare
that a teacher floods forms or enhances them but never discusses the forms
explicitly in his or her lesson. (p. 342-3)
Often, language teachers use input enhancement without knowing they are engaging in
the practice. They enunciate, raise their eyebrows, jump, flap their arms, or dance around
as they speak. Texts are filled with underlined, bold, colored and italicized words.
Teachers following the Comprehensible-Input Method, based on Krashens Input
Hypothesis, wrap almost their entire methodology around pictures, gestures and
storytelling (as cited in Gass, 2013, p. 198). Technology allows innumerable possibilities
for input from yet unimaginable sources. Teachers use this input enhancement and
package it most effectively with explicit instruction. To get a better picture of how input
enhancement is best-used and most impactful, researchers must test it in the only way it is
in fact used, in the classroom. They must work with, not in service of, teachers to truly
determine, when supported by explicit instruction, what forms of input enhancement are
most effective.
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References
Gass, S. (2013). The Relationship between L2 Input and L2 Output. In E. Macaro (Ed.),
Bloomsbury companion to second language acquisition (pp. 194-219). London:
Bloomsbury.
Lee, S., & Huang, H. (2008). Visual Input Enhancement and Grammar Learning: A
Meta- Analytic Review. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30.
doi:10.1017/s0272263108080479
Lee, S.-K. (2007). Effects of textual enhancement and topic familiarity on Korean EFL
students reading comprehension and learning of passive form. Language
Learning, 57, 87118.
Reinders, H., & Cho, M. Y. (2010, September). Extensive Listening Practice and Input
Enhancement Using Mobile Phones: Encouraging Out-of-Class Learning with
Mobile Phones. TESL-EJ, 14(2). Retrieved June 24, 2016, from http://www.tesl-
ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume14/ej54/ej54m2/