The effects of structured-input and structured-output tasks on the acquisition of English causative Seminar

The experimental study presented in this paper (Benati and Batziou, 2017, 2018) considered the effects of structured-input and structure-output tasks when delivered in isolation and in combination. The effects of three different treatments (structured-input only; structured-output only; and a combination of structured-input and structured-output practice) were measured on the acquisition of English causative forms (feature affected by The First Noun Principle). Chinese adults and Greek school-age learners learning English participated in the study. Interpretation and production tests (sentence and discourse) were used as pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test. Results show that learners benefit from structured-input practice and maintain their ability to interpret and produce the target feature after that practice.