Abstract/Summary

English grammar teaching in Chinese secondary schools emphasizes a connection between grammatical form and meaning, a crucial skill for acquiring grammatical knowledge. However, existing research on interventions to achieve this goal remains limited. Processing instruction (PI), based on the Input Processing (IP) Theory, offers a promising approach. Its structured input activities encourage learners to analyse grammatical features by working out the meaning they stand for, potentially establishing form-meaning connections. Nevertheless, PI has not been widely explored in the Chinese teaching context. Additionally, while prior studies exploring the effects of PI and meaning-based output instruction (MOI) have yielded interesting and conflicting results, the effects of a combined input-based PI with output-based MOI have not been fully studied yet. Thus, the present study addresses this gap by comparing the effects of PI and MOI both in combination and isolation among Chinese secondary school learners (aged 13-14). A mixed-method explanatory design was employed. Four intact classes from two secondary schools (n=167) were randomly assigned to the PI, MOI, PI+MOI, and Control groups. All three intervention groups received the same explicit information about the target structure, namely the English passive voice. The PI group received structured input activities, the MOI group involved structured output activities requiring learners to produce the target feature and the PI + MOI group contained half structured input activities from PI and half structured output activities from MOI. The control group did not receive instruction regarding English passive voice, but they had their regular school English lessons. Learners' passive voice acquisition was assessed through pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests (sentence- and discourse-level receptive and productive tests). A vocabulary test was administered at pre-test only and included as a covariate in a set of repeated measures ANCOVA tests used to assess whether there were differences in learning gains for the different groups. As there was a significant effect of this covariate, a correlation test was conducted to explore the relationship between their vocabulary scores and grammar gain scores. To gain further insights, stimulated recall interviews were conducted with four students (high and low proficiency) from each group to explore their attitudes and learning strategies. All three interventions yielded large, durable gains across the four tests while the control group made no improvement. No significant differences emerged between the PI, MOI, and PI+MOI groups overall. However, effect sizes suggested that the PI + MOI and MOI groups showed trends of larger gains than the PI group in sentence-level receptive (S-R) and productive (S-P) tests. In discourse-level receptive (D-R) and productive (D-P) tests, the PI + MOI and PI groups tended to achieve larger gains in the D-R test, while the PI + MOI and MOI groups showed trends of larger gains in the D-P test. Notably, the PI + MOI group demonstrated the largest gains in three out of four tests, indicating a potential benefits of combining the input-based PI with output-based MOI although these findings should be interpreted with caution in light of the non-significant statistical differences. Correlation results revealed a negative correlation between learners’ vocabulary scores and the S-R gain scores in the PI + MOI group, suggesting that PI + MOI was particularly effective for supporting learners with low vocabulary proficiency. Finally, the qualitative data showed that learners in the PI + MOI and MOI groups believed that the intervention helped them both recognize the target feature and produce it in output activities. However, learners in the PI group only reported that it was helpful for them to notice the target feature in the input activities. Additionally, the data suggested that the feedback in PI + MOI and MOI might be more effective in focusing learners’ attention than input-based PI. Furthermore, learners, especially those with low proficiency, reported relying on the easily identifiable cue (e.g., the “by + noun” in the present study) to identify a grammatical feature rather than noticing the entire structure.