Izumi Shinichi

Based on a previous study on differences between Japanese university students with and without overseas educational experience regarding their beliefs, learning strategies, and confidence in their English learning, this study investigates differences in the same constructs between Japanese university students with higher and lower levels of English language proficiency. Questionnaire responses from 78 students with high second-language (L2) proficiency and 104 more "average" Japanese university students provided findings that: higher-level students hold stronger beliefs in experiential learning approaches, while those of lower ability believe more strongly in analytic approaches; higher-level students use experiential strategies more than lower-level students do; and both groups, but particularly those at the lower level, show low confidence levels in their L2 abilities. Weak correlations were found between beliefs and strategies, and weak to moderate correlations were observed between strategies and confidence. The use of experiential strategies are found to be more widely and more Strongly related with increase in learners' confidence in using L2. Overall, the study findings highlight the importance of beliefs in and use of experiential learning while recognizing the value of analytic learning for EFL learners.

The assumption underlying research on feedback is that, in writing, feedback is something provided for what actually shows up in the learner's text. However, a new dimension may need to be added to the debate in light of the Noticing Hypothesis, the Output Hypothesis, and the emerging evidence on what L2 learners actually notice as they produce output and receive input. Noticing may occur not just when learners produce output in an observable form, but also when they stop short of articulating their meaning or form, which results in "covert problems." Delving into issues discussed in the rest of the contributions to the special issue, and using a multistage writing task, the current study investigated (1) overt and covert problems that Japanese university EFL learners experience as they produce written output, (2) the extent to which they notice their solutions and incorporate them in their subsequent revisions, and (3) the differential roles that a model text and reformulations may play in these processes. The results revealed that the participants spontaneously noticed solutions to both overt and covert problems and incorporated them in their revisions. The two types of feedback texts were found to play somewhat different roles, as the model text included solutions to overt and covert problems roughly equally, while reformulations offered solutions overwhelmingly to overt problems. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed based on these findings. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This study investigated whether giving learners an opportunity for oral output has any positive effect on the L2 learners' acquisition of a grammatical form. Twenty-four adult ESL learners were randomly assigned to one of three groups: an output group, which engaged in a picture description task that involved input comprehension and output production; a non-output group, which engaged in a picture sequencing task that required input comprehension only; and a placebo control group. The two treatment groups were exposed to the same aural input for the same amount of time. Learning was assessed by means of a pre-test and a post-test consisting of production and reception parts. The results indicated that, contrary to our expectations, the output group failed to outperform the non-output group. On the contrary, it was the non-output group that showed greater overall gains in learning. A careful post-hoc re-examination of the treatment tasks revealed that the output task failed to engage learners in the syntactic processing that is necessary to trigger L2 learning, while the task for the non-output group appeared to promote better form-meaning mapping.

The output hypothesis claims that production makes the learner move from 'semantic processing' prevalent in comprehension to more 'syntactic processing' that is necessary for second language development. The purpose of this article is to illuminate the psycholinguistic mechanisms that underlie this claim by reviewing previous literature in language acquisition and cognitive psychology on the comprehension and production processes in language use and language learning. In speech comprehension, the interactive and compensatory nature of the human comprehension system can both promote comprehension and hinder language development for second language learners, unless the learners are somehow pushed to attend to form-meaning connections during input processing. In elucidating the mechanisms by which output promotes SLA, it is argued, by drawing on Levelt's (1989, 1992, 1993) speech production model, that the processes of grammatical encoding during production and monitoring to check the matching of the communicative intention and the output enable language learners to assess the possibilities and limitations of their interlanguage capability. This may, under certain conditions, serve as an internal priming device for consciousness raising for the learners, which in turn creates an optimal condition for language learning to take place. It is argued that understanding of the constraints and potentials for learning created by input and output processing is crucial for devising pedagogical tasks that effectively promote interlanguage development.

Following an initial investigation (Izumi, Bigelow, Fujiwara, &amp Fearnow, 1999), this study examines the noticing function of output (Swain, 1995, 1998), namely, the activity of producing the target language that may prompt L2 learners to recognize their linguistic problems and bring relevant aspects of the L2 to their attention. Before completing (a) essay-writing tasks and (b) text reconstruction tasks, two groups of ESL learners received the same input containing numerous examples of the target form, the past hypothetical conditional in English. One group was given opportunities for output whereas the other group engaged in comprehension-based activities. Although the results indicate no unique effects of output, extended opportunities to produce output and receive relevant input were found to be crucial in improving learners' use of the grammatical structure. A closer examination of the data suggested, however, that output did not always succeed in drawing the learners' attention to the target form, a phenomenon that seems related to both learner and linguistic factors. The essay-writing tasks were found to be much more susceptible to such individual variation than were the text reconstruction tasks. Further research is necessary to more precisely specify the noticing function of output and derive effective uses of output in L2 teaching.