Term

2008

Capstone

Restricted Access Thesis

Degree Name

MAESL

Abstract

The research question addressed in this study is, will noticing aid in the processing of aspectual forms for meaning while reading short stories? The motivating factor for this thesis was exploring a combinatorial approach of form-focused instruction and communicative language teaching that results in noticing and assists in converting input into intake. This study explores grammar-cued processing patterns of 20 ELL university students while they are reading short narratives. The stories are designed to test whether aspect impacts causal inferencing and mental representations when situations are presented with textual highlighting. The verbal protocol method was used to capture noticing through short-term memory data, and a series of final written questions captured intake through long-term memory data. We found that subjects noticed the difference between the aspectual forms on several linguistic levels. However, noticing did not seem to aid in converting aspectual input into intake.

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