Structured Input Activities in Processing Instruction : A quasi-experimental study to explore two types of structured input activities in Taiwanese foreign language classrooms

This study set out to investigate the roles of the two different types of structured input activities (SIA) in the framework of Processing Instruction (i.e. PI, a type of input-based grammar pedagogy package). It addresses some weaknesses of previous PI studies and begins to address several new issues in the PI research agenda. A classroom-based quasi-experiment was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of different types of input activities within PI: Referential and affective activities. Taiwanese primary school students were allocated into instruction and control groups. A range of elicitation tests were employed to measure the impact of the interventions, including a grammaticality judgment test (GJT) with a time constraint, a gap-fill written test, a picture-based narration oral test, a structured conversation and a short written receptive vocabulary test.