A Study of EFL learners monitor-use based on type of learning task and rule difficulty

Abstract

15323 ABSTRACT The use of a learner's conscious knowledge, i.e. monitor in Krashen's term, has an important role in language acquisition. The use of this conscious knowledge is claimed to be influenced by the type of learning task the learners are given and the difficulty level of the grammar rules they are taught. Many studies have been conducted on monitor use, inquiring about its effect in language learning and language teaching. Almost all of these studies are carried out in ESL settings. This study aims at providing an insight into EFL learners' monitor use by taking the factors such as task-type and the difficulty level of particular grammar rules into consideration. The main question investigated in this study was whether accuracy increases depending on the learners' monitor use in a particular task and at what level of rule difficulty. To get an answer to this question, 20 native Turkish subjects from Gazi University in Ankara were taught four morphemes at two levels of learning difficulty (rather than linguistic difficulty): present progressive morpheme and copula as simple rules; regular past tense marker and third person ^s_ as complex rules. This instruction was given by a native Turkish instructor. After that instruction subjects were given a discrete-item test and following this test they were required to write two sets of compositions ona given picture under monitor-free and monitored conditions. The first compositions were communication- based, that is, the subjects were asked to focus on the message they were communicating rather than grammatical accuracy. In the second composition task, though, they were particularly asked to focus on linguistic accuracy. Thus, a set of discrete-item test and two sets of compositions were obtained as ttie data. After the scoring of the discrete-item tests and the compositions, mean scores in the discrete-item test, for the items grouped into the two levels of difficulty, were compared and contrasted by running a t-test. For compositions, the mean differences of the type of condition (communicative vs. monitored) and the level of difficulty (simple vs. complex) were calculated by running a (2x2) two-way factorial analysis of variance. The results of the data analysis showed that there was no significant relationship between the students' use of their monitor and the accuracy of both simple and complex morphemes in compositions. However, the data revealed that the difficulty level of the morphemes in both discrete- item test and in compositions significantly affected students' accuracy. These conclusions reaffirm the findings of many past studies on morpheme acquisition: some structures, although simple in terms of linguistic complexity, are acquired late, that is why they aredifficult (e.g. -ed and ^s.). Some structures, on the contrary, are acquired earlier (e.g. -inq and be). In this study, the findings of non-significant use of monitoring in different tasks and the importance of the difficulty level of grammar rules increasing accuracy, are expected to attract the attention of EFL teachers, teacher trainees as well as curriculum developers.