Reconstruction tasks

As has been repeatedly pointed out in previous studies (Hanaoka, 2007; Izumi 2002; Izumi et al, 1999; Muranoi 2007)

reconstruction task is considered one of the most effective techniques to elicit learner output, especially when there is a specific linguistic f ocus in the study. Through reconstruction, learners will be able to compare their interlanguage (IL) and targe t language (TL), which may lead to their noticing of the target forms. As Izumi (2002) pointed out “…one advantage of reconstruction task lies in its control over the content and form that learner s produce” thus “…maximizing the

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equivalence between the learners’ output and the target input …” (p. 551).

Besides, it is also considered effective in input -output-input-output treatment design as in the present study hoping to capture the difference between learners’ noticing from first to second input, and uptake from first to second output.

3.4.3.1 Cloze reconstruction task

In present study, reconstruction task is operationalized in two different ways. One is in the form of cloze task, or sometimes considered as a f ill-in-gap task. The task requires participants to fill in the missing words according to what they have read without allowing them to go back to the input passage, though the picture from input passage was provided as clues to help them recall.

This version is developed based on the findings of Borjigin et al (2013) in which they included two different versions of reconstruction tasks, with one of them asking participants to reconstruct the whole passage (i.e., text reconstruction) and the other asking them to reconstruct only the missing parts (i.e., cloze reconstruction) which were the target forms. They found the latter one facilitated the acquisition of the target form while the previous one failed to do so, which led them to argue that “the cognitively less demanding output task enabled participants to focus more attention on target forms and acquire them” (p. 67).

Therefore, the same form of cloze reconstruction task is adopted in this study and designed with 7 items as distracters and 12 on simple past tense in passive form which include the indicator by. The task is shown below.

A very exciting year

In January, Amy ( ) as ( ) secretary ( ) the Inter-Tel company.

In March, she ( ) to school ( ) the company to study statistics and information technology.

In April, she ( ) a raise.

Just two months ( ), she ( ) to the position of supervisor of her department.

In August, she ( ) as the “Employee of the Month”.

In October, she ( ) another raise.

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In November, she ( ) to apply for a position in the company’s overseas office ( ) Bangkok, Thailand.

In December, she ( ) the new position ( ) Thailand.

At ( ) month, she ( ) the “Employee of the Year”.

She can’t believe all the wonderful ( ) that ( ) to her since she ( ) just twelve months ago.

3.4.3.2 Editing reconstruction task

The other form of reconstruction task was carried out as an error correction editing task, also called in many studies error correction or form correction. It requires participants to identify the errors and then based on what they have read try to edit the errone ous part into correct one. Again, as has been done in the cloze task, the participants were told to provide the correct form without referring back to input passage. Error correction is a commonly practiced task in language classrooms as cloze task (Lee, 2007; Storch, 1999), but was considered having an advantage in drawing learners’ attention from meaning to form (Lee, 2007; Wong, 2003) since it asks learners to identify and correct the errors.

The numbers of distracters and passive forms are kept the same as the cloze task. The erroneous parts in this task are the parts that are missing in cloze task. The types of error targeting passive forms following the previous studies (Lee, 2007; Spada e t al, 2014) were designed in following ways:

(1). absence of be verb;

(2). using present participle instead of past participle of verb after be verb;

(3). active voice instead of passive voice;

(4). using original form of the verb instead of past part iciple after be verb;

(5). incorrect form of past participle.

Therefore, among 10 sentences, three of them contain type (1) error, one of them contains type (5)

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error, rest of the six are divided equally into error (2) (3) (4). The distributions of the errors are shown below in the task.

A very exciting year

In January, Amy employed as the secretary for the Inter-Tel company. (1)

In March, she sended to school with the company to study statistics and information technology. (5)

In April, she was giving a raise. (2)

Just two months late, she promoted to the position of supervisor of her department. (1) In August, she chooses as the “Employee of the Month”. (3)

In October, she gave another raise. (3)

In November, she was inviting to apply for a position in the company’s overseas office on Bangkok, Thailand. (2)

In December, she provided the new position of Thailand. (1) At end of month, she was award the “Employee of the Year”.(4)

She can’t believe all the wonderful thing that has happened to her since s he was hire just twelve months ago. (4)

However, compared to the cloze task, which requires participants to reconstruct the whole passive structure (be + past participant) the editing task already provided either be or past participle, though some of them were provided in incorrect form. Thus, the scoring criteria for the two types of tasks were different.

There are two underlying rationale for these two reconstruction tasks. First, as has been mentioned in chapter 2 that Robinson et al (2012) suggested that in order to examine whether a certain individual difference associate with a particular task character, it would be preferable to keep the task difference at a minimum level. Therefore, in present study the two output tasks are designed to differ from each other in one major way. The Cloze task requires reading, recall and reconstruction steps while editing requires reading, recall, compare and reconstruction. Then one may expect that since the missing parts are so obvious in the cloze reconstruction task, it might be hypothesized that those who were involved in the cloze reconstruction task would underline more

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passive related items in second input phase compared to those who were engaged to editing reconstruction. Editing reconstruction, on the other hand, might be hypothesized to be more effective in helping learners process the form better, since it requires a comparison stage, which put in other words, provide learners with opportunity to compare the mismatch between erroneous forms and the correct forms. Secondly, previous studies (Nassaji & Tian 2010; Storch 1997; 2007) also suggested that despite being well-used FFI tasks the effects of cloze and editing tasks have not been thoroughly researched.