Processing instruction effects regardless of input modality and developmental processing constraints? A school lab classroom study on the morphosyntactic acquisition of L2-English

Abstract

We investigated whether Austrian L2-English learners would benefit more from written or auditory processing instruction (PI) on the third person singular -(e) s tense form. The instruction and all three tests (pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test two weeks after the instruction) were conducted in school lab classrooms. Using accuracy scores and reaction times for the interpretation tasks and accuracy scores for a gap-filling task, this study extrapolates the instructional effects according to modality type. We aimed to find out whether (a) the modality of the PI affects its efficacy regardless of the imposed develop-mental processing constraints of the target feature and how (i.e. resulting in faster or slower and more or less accurate processing); (b) whether any differences in gains could be attributed to the modality of the assessment task; and (c) whether any gained positive effects of instruction (regardless of modality) are maintained over time.