The effect of input prossing instruction on teaching English past tenses

Abstract

This research work seeks to explore the role of input-processing instruction in improving students’ explicit knowledge and grammatical accuracy in the use of English past tenses. Students of English at Constantine University 1 seem to be quite deficient not only in their comprehension of tenses in general but also in their production as well. It is commonly believed that learners’ weaknesses in the acquisition of the past tenses are due to the traditional method used which is ‘output-based instruction’ that focuses on immediate production over comprehension. So, it is advocated that teaching past tenses would preferably be associated with a new method called ‘input-processing instruction’ which is developed by Vanpatten (1996). It focuses on providing students with opportunities for comprehending rich input that may lead to prompter intake. It has been hypothesized that (a) grammar input-processing instruction would be more effective than output-based instruction in promoting grammatical accuracy about English past tenses and (b) it would be also more beneficial than output-based instruction in enhancing learners’ explicit knowledge about English past tenses. The research work is carried out on two groups of first-year LMD students at the Department of Letters and English Language, University of Constantine 1. The research tools used to gather information are a questionnaire administered to students to see their attitudes towards the methods of instruction used and an experimental method which involved the control group who was taught under output-based instruction and the experimental group who was taught under input-processing instruction. The findings revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in comprehending and producing tenses. Hence, it has been suggested that this innovative packet would rather be used as an alternative to the traditional method for enhancing both students’ explicit knowledge and grammatical accuracy.