Description
A Master of Arts thesis in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) by Najat Alabdullah entitled, “Discourse Effects on The Acquisition of The English Causative Forms: Structured Input Vs. Structured Output Practice”, submitted in May 2020. Thesis advisor is Dr. Alessandro Benati. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Approval Signatures, Completion Certificate, and AUS Archives Consent Form).
Abstract
This research presents the results of a quasi-experimental empirical study investigating the effects of structured input activities and structured output tasks on the acquisition of English causative forms. The study is framed on VanPatten’s (1996) input processing theory. The form chosen for this investigation is affected by a processing strategy called the ‘First Noun Principle’. Participants in this study were school-age learners (aged 1 -13) from a L1 Arabic background who were studying English as a second language. A pre and post-test procedure was adopted. Two instructional groups were created: (i) structured input; (ii) structured output. Discourse-level tasks were used to assess the effectiveness of the two instructional treatments. Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and ANOVA. The main findings from this study support the view that structured input is an effective pedagogical intervention in helping young L2 learners from L1 Arabic background to process, interpret and produce accurate English causative forms at discourse-level. The main findings of this study have theoretical and pedagogical implications for language learning and teaching.