Studies about PI and TBI

As has been discussed above, PI, TBI, and the eclectic instruction could be used to improve learners’ writing ability. Based on the studies of PI and TBI, the effects of each instruction would be discussed first and then which aspects of learners’ writing ability would be improved by adopting each of the three instructions would also be analyzed.

VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) intended to compare the effects of traditional

instruction (TI) and processing instruction (PI) on learners’ acquisition of Spanish objective pronouns. The participants were divided into three groups, TI group, PI group, and control group. The TI group received explicit explanation on the target item and was given practices from mechanical drills, meaningful drills to open-ended practices. The PI group also received explicit explanation on the target item and was given practices using the processing strategies to process input data. The control group received no explicit explanation on the target item. After the intervention, the participants were given sentence-level interpretation task and sentence-level production task in both the pretest and posttest. The results showed that PI group had significant difference than TI group in the interpretation task and had equal variance as TI group in the production task. The reason for the equal development in the production task may be due to the fact that the participants of PI group had learned how to perceive and process input in processing instruction and this could also benefit their performance in the production task. For the TI group, VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) provided a possible explanation that participants of the TI group might have only learned how to perform the task during the drills and output practices but acquired the new language structure. They also proposed a conserved statement which is the results might be different in spontaneous circumstances.

There were other replicated studies on different target structures but they remained on sentence-level and had the same results as the previous study which is PI keeps significant

difference in interpretation tasks and has equal development as TI in the production tasks (Benati, 2005; Cadierno, 1995; Farley, 2001; VanPatten & Sanz, 1995). Except for the above replicated studies on sentence-level, Cheng (2004) conducted a study on production task of discourse-level. The study aimed to know learners’ acquisition in Spanish copular verb, ser and estar. It is a more complex structure for learners to acquire and the researcher would like to examine the generalibility of PI effects to a more complex target item and discourse-level production task. The research design was the same as the previous study except for the discourse-level production task in the posttests. For the discourse-level production task, the researchers provided four pictures for the participants to describe the pictures in the form of a narrated story. Overall, the results were consistent with the previous study. PI group showed more steady performance in the posttests than TI group in the discourse-level production task. TI group’s performance dropped in the second posttest.

Cheng (2004) suggested participants processed input into intake and this helped them develop their language system. He also pointed out the limit of this study. Vocabulary was provided in the discourse-level production task. The results might be different if participants did it without the assistance in vocabulary.

Most processing instruction studies focused on college-level students and mostly on Spanish and Italian second language learners. Instead, Benati (2005) conducted a study on the acquisition of English past simple tense in secondary school. The participants were

twelve, thirteen-year-old ESL learners in China and Greece. The participants in the two countries are divided into three groups, TI group, PI group, and meaning-based output instruction group (MOI). Meaning-based output instruction is one of the output-based instruction techniques. Instead of mechanical drills, communicative and interactive activities are often used in MOI. Participants of TI, PI, and MOI groups are given sentence-level interpretation task and sentence-level production task in pretest and posttest.

The results showed that PI group had more significant difference from TI and MOI groups in the interpretation task. The three instructions had equal improvement in production task.

Benati (2005) thus suggested that learners could not have good performance in production without having good input first. However, the number of participants in each sub-group was less than 15 people and this might not be convincing enough when carrying out the statistical analysis.

Based on the above review, processing instruction focuses on learners’ input processing strategies and thus benefits learners’ comprehension more than production. In fact, VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) also agree that communicative activities facilitate learners’ language acquisition. However, the positive effects could be achieved under the appropriate situation. That is, output activities have to be followed by instruction that focuses on input so that it could serve as the knowledge base for production. VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) also suggested that “it is important for instructors to focus on output

activities that encourage learners to be accurate while also attending to meaning (p. 237).”

Thus, we could infer that PI may help improve learners’ writing ability mainly in accuracy.

What the above discussion tells us is we could teach learners with PI at the earlier stage of writing instruction and with TBI at the later stage in the eclectic approach because learners need language knowledge to process and produce language correctly. The recommended procedure for the eclectic instruction is also consistent with the classroom ecology. According to (Tanaka, 2001), teachers often begin their teaching from lecture on a target structure, followed by more controlled practices, and then move to more open-ended activities or tasks.

As for task-based instruction, it is often used to teach intermediate students at college level (Arslanyilmaz, 2012; N. A. Brown, Bown, & Eggett, 2009; Rad & Jafari, 2013).

However, Rad and Jafari (2013) also used TBI to improve pre-intermediate EFL learners’

reading and writing ability. Different tasks such as sorting, comparing, and problem solving were assigned to the participants to develop their reading and writing ability. The ability of problem solving and expressing ideas with written language are reported by the participants in feedback forms, learning journals, and interview. Despite these positive responses, it is a pity that the researchers did not provide quantitative evidence to further support learners’

improvement in reading and writing ability.

Most TBI studies in writing supported that TBI could improve learners’ writing ability

in fluency (Arslanyilmaz, 2012; Arslanyilmaz & Pedersen, 2010; N. A. Brown et al., 2009;

Li, 2000; Rad & Jafari, 2013; Rezazadeh, Tavakoli, & Rasekh, 2011) but different task types may have different effects on learners’ writing ability. Foster and Skehan (1996) conducted a study to find out the relationship between task types and the quality of learners’

oral language production. In the study, there were two task types, structured and unstructured. Structured tasks asked for lower cognitive demand but unstructured tasks asked for higher cognitive demand. The results showed that the participants of structured-task group spoke more fluently and accurately but the participants from unstructured group spoke with more complex language than structured-task group. Foster and Skehan (1996) proposed possible explanation for the results; learners have only limited resources so they could only pay attention to one or two aspect when making output.

Rezazadeh et al. (2011) also conducted a similar study in written production. They designed two types of writing tasks, instructional tasks and argumentative tasks.

Instructional tasks were more structured and low demanding and argumentative tasks were unstructured and high demanding. The results were similar to those of Foster and Skehan (1996). The participants of instructional-task group wrote more fluently and the participants of argumentative–task group showed higher complexity in their writing. The reasons may be that instructional tasks are cognitively and linguistically familiar to learners so they could achieve higher level in fluency and accuracy. On the other hand, learners of

argumentative-task group need to do reasoning and organize information so they would use more complex vocabulary and structures in their writing. In fact, Benati (2005) also suggested that logic and reasoning training would improve learners’ fluency and complexity.

Based on the above review, we could conclude that TBI could benefit learners’ writing ability in fluency for sure. TBI may also improve learners’ writing ability in complexity through unstructured or argumentative task design. Moreover, what the above review also tells us is that we could not anticipate learners to acquire and pay attention to different aspects of writing through just one writing instruction because of learners’ limited resources.

Because PI improve learners’ writing ability mainly in accuracy and TBI develop learners’

writing ability in fluency and perhaps complexity, this complementary distribution allows us to assume that the eclectic instruction might be a more practical way to improve learners’

writing ability. The eclectic instruction combining with PI and TBI allow learners to focus on different aspects of writing at earlier and latter stages of instruction. Thus, it could benefit learners’ writing ability in fluency, accuracy, and complexity.