Modalidad de adquisición de las maderas en la fase final de La Bastida

Neither language anxiety nor state anxiety predicted the noticing of the future tense, a finding that could be interpreted in light of the perceptual salience of the form. While the future tense was the pre-determined language focus of the study, with 12 instances in the model text meant to raise the participants’ consciousness of the form, only 16 participants (20%) reported noticing it. This is a non-surprising finding given learner-created salience (Sharwood Smith, 1991, 1993) which may or may not match the instructor’s or researcher’s focus (R. Ellis et al., 2001; Han, Park, & Combs, 2008; Hanaoka, 2007; Long & Robinson, 1998; Sharwood Smith, 1991, 1993).

It could, therefore, be argued that the future marker was not salient enough to be noticed. The total instances of future noticing reported in the Results section above (88.75%) involved both underlining the form and reporting its noticing compared to only 20% of the participants who explicitly reported noticing the future marker in their

confounded by the participants’ attending to the whole verb phrase or clause rather than the future prefix specifically. In fact, the participants’ text underlines were all of verbs, verb phrases, and clauses, and only two participants specifically underlined the future prefix. It might then be argued that the future marker, a one-letter attached as a prefix to present tense verbs (see target form description in the Research Methods chapter), might not have been salient enough to trigger form noticing. This observation goes in line with morphosyntactic features in general being some of the least commonly noticed by language learners (Al-Surmi, 2012; Chen, 2013; Mackey et al., 2000).

In explaining the hypothesized low salience of the future marker, it could be argued that the future prefix (a grammatical morpheme) was redundant, and was, therefore, “blocked” or “overshadowed” by more salient cues in the stream of L2 input (N. C. Ellis, 2006c, 2008a; N. C. Ellis & Collins, 2009). The future time frame was established by other temporal references in the text (e.g. the content lexical item

“tomorrow”). N. C. Ellis (2008a) notes that “Morphological cues to tense are nonsalient,” and remarks that “Grammatical morphemes are often redundant and overshadowed by more salient lexical cues to tense or number” (p. 236). He further explains, “If a learner knows these lexical cues and has processed them, then subsequent processing of the morphological cues in these contexts affords no further information” (p. 236). In the current study, the future time frame has been established in the model text right from the beginning. The text title reads: “Tomorrow is the weekend,” and there are three instances of the temporal reference “tomorrow” in the text, including two in the first line. This

observation raises the possibility that the future tense morpheme might have been overshadowed by the lexical temporal reference “tomorrow.”

It was also possible for the participants to comprehend the text and to perform the subsequent task, comprehension or production, without relying on this tense marker. N. C. Ellis (2005) remarks that “a language learner might never get around to noticing low- salience cues, particularly when the interpretation accuracy afforded by the other more obvious cues does well enough for everyday communicative survival” (p. 323). This notion resonates with findings from S. Takahashi (2005) above. In this study, learner noticing was found to be contingent on the relevance of the forms to the participants’ learning goals in achieving more effective L2 communication.

Empirical evidence comes from VanPatten (1990) and its replication study, Greenslade et al. (1999). The studies investigated L2 Spanish input processing in the aural mode (the former study) and the written mode (the latter study). VanPatten reported that the participants at the lower levels of L2 proficiency, as is the case with the

participants in the current study, were less able to distinguish the free morpheme (the definite article la), i.e. a separate word, and the bound morpheme (the verb morpheme -n) than those at higher levels. Such a finding resonates with the notion that learners at higher levels of proficiency, usually achieved following years of practice and L2 use, can attend to L2 cues in their processing strategies in an L2-like manner (Darcy, Peperkamp, & Dupoux, 2007; Gass & Selinker, 2008; Ortega, 2009).

Greenslade et al. (1999) report that attending to the free morpheme la had a greater negative impact on meaning comprehension than attending to the bound

morpheme -n. This finding suggests that -n might not have been noticed as the free morpheme la was. Greenslade et al. argue that while both morphemes encode “relatively equal amounts of information” (-n number and person and la number and gender), “in the written mode it appears that by virtue of being attached to the verb stem, -n may not have been isolated and, therefore, may have been processed in combination with the semantic content of the verb” (p. 77). Along the same lines, it could be argued that the participants in the current study might have processed the bound future morpheme ـح in combination with the semantic content of the verbs.

The discussion of form salience above resonates with the construct of

communicative value and the principles in VanPatten’s (1996, 2002, 2004) model of Input Processing. As communicative value could be considered a parameter of form salience (Leow et al., 2003; Osgood & Hoosain, 1974), it could be argued that in the current study, the future marker was not salient enough due to its limited communicative value in the model text. VanPatten notes that a form’s communicative value is based on two features: [+/–inherent semantic value] and [+/–redundancy]. The future tense marker in the current study (ـح) could be viewed as a +inherent semantic value. Morphemes are “usually considered to be the minimal form having a meaning” (Osgood & Hoosain, 1974, p. 168). However, ـح is +redundancy in terms of it communicative value; the future time reference could have been attained in the text through the adverb “tomorrow,” potentially reducing its communicative value. According to the Input Processing principles of “The Primacy of Content Words,” “The Lexical Preference,” “The Preference for Nonredundancy,” and “The Meaning-Before-Nonmeaning” principles

(VanPatten, 2004), learners are inclined to channel their focal attention to meaning- bearing elements (e.g. content words) before processing elements with lower

communicative value (e.g., grammatical morphemes). The participants are, therefore, more likely to rely on lexical items than on grammatical form “when both encode the same semantic information” (VanPatten, 2004, p. 14) during L2 input exposure.

The hypothesis that the participants did not prioritize the processing of the future prefix goes in line with results from textual enhancement research. Leow et al. (2003) reported significant benefits for textual enhancement in the noticing of the more salient form (Spanish present perfect) over the less salient form (Spanish present subjunctive). Forms with higher communicative value were also reported as being more successfully noticed through the enhancement of the input than forms with a lower communicative value (e.g., Alanen, 1995; Doughty, 1991; Doughty & Williams, 1998; Jourdenais et al., 1995; Shook, 1994). A study of the learning of Arabic investigating the noticing of a syntactic feature with a non-redundant form of high communicative value (the comparative) vs. a redundant morphosyntactic feature (the dual pronoun attached to present tense verbs) yielded similar results; the comparative form was more successfully noticed than the dual pronoun (Park & Nassif, 2013).

Further, in line with the learners’ developmental readiness (Pienemann, 1998), the participants might have attended to their own needs (i.e. the “gap” in their existing

knowledge (Schmidt & Frota, 1986) rather than to the researcher’s intended focus of the study, a variable long neglected in output-induced noticing studies with a pre-determined language focus. It could be seen that a considerable number of the participants had verb

conjugation problems. This factor might have oriented their attention to the stem verbs to the exclusion of the future prefix.

Given the discussion above, the future marker might not have triggered learner noticing, and, accordingly, anxiety reactions. This conclusion is supported by results from a follow-up ordinal logistic regression. Language anxiety measured by the FLCAS and state anxiety measured by the CIQ were each entered into a separate regression model to explore the specific prediction ratios at the different thresholds of noticing (low to medium and medium to high noticing on the future noticing variable). The results showed that as the level of noticing increased, so did the anxiety prediction. With FLCAS in the regression, Wald (the equivalent of F value in the analysis of variance) increased from .047 to 2.788. The size of prediction increased from 1.2 to 2.9 units at the low to medium and medium to high noticing thresholds, respectively. It was not statistically significant, however. In the CIQ regression, Wald increased even more considerably (.140 to 5.155), reaching statistical significance at p < .025 (the size of prediction increased from 1.2 to 3.1). It could, therefore, be concluded that while state anxiety did not significantly predict the noticing of the future marker, the higher the level of noticing across the noticing thresholds, the more likely noticing was to be prone to anxiety