Input Enhancement and L2 Question Formation

TLDR

The study examines how form‑focused instruction and corrective feedback (input enhancement) within a communicative program affect learners’ accuracy in question formation. Three beginner francophone ESL classes (ages 10–12) received input‑enhancement activities for two weeks, and their paper‑and‑pencil and oral task performance was pre‑post tested against an uninstructed control group. Instruction improved syntactic accuracy, with input‑enhanced learners significantly outperforming the control, indicating genuine interlanguage system changes.

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the extent to which form-focused instruction and corrective feedback (i.e. 'input enhancement'), provided within a primarily communicative program, contribute to learners' accuracy in question formation. Over a two-week period, three experimental classes of beginner level francophone ESL learners(aged 10–12 years) were exposed to a variety of input enhancement activities on question formation. Their performance on paperand-pencil tasks and an oral communication task was assessed on a pre-post test basis and compared with an uninstructed control group. The results indicate that instruction contributed to syntactic accuracy and that learners who were exposed to the input enhancement activities significantly outperformed the uninstructed learners. These results are interpreted as evidence that inputenhancement can bring about genuine changes in learners' interlanguage systems.