Current Developments in Research on the Teaching of Grammar

(continued from Issue 61) Textual Enhancement There are a number of studies that have investigated the effects of textual enhancement on drawing the learner's attention to grammar, and the method has been described as the least explicit and the least intrusive method of focus on form (Doughty & Varela, 1998). It involves highlighting certain features of input that might go unnoticed under normal circumstances by typographically manipulating them through boldfacing, italicizing, underlining, or capitalizing. The assumption is that such manipulations enhance the perceptual saliency of the target structures, and this, hence, increases their chance of being noticed. A related technique is the pro-

There are a number of studies that have investigated the effects of textual enhancement on drawing the learner＇s attention to grammar, and the method has been described as the least explicit and the least intrusive method of focus on form （Doughty ＆ Varela, 1998）. It involves highlighting certain features of input that might go unnoticed under normal circumstances by typographically manipulating them through boldfacing, italicizing, underlining, or capitalizing. The assumption is that such manipulations enhance the perceptual saliency of the target structures, and this, hence, increases their chance of being notieed. A related technique is the provision of numerous instances of target linguistic forms in the input, called an inputflood （Trahey ＆ While, 1993）. Again, the assumption is that frequent exposure to target items enhances their saliency and hence results in noticing the forms （ Schmidt, 1990; Sharwood Smith, 1993）. Whereas studies by Doughty （1991） and Fotos （1994） reported positive results in terms of awareness of target structures and proficiency gains resulting from textually enhanced structures,