Individual and Collaborative Output Tasks: Effects on the Acquisition of English Inversion Structures

This study investigated the effectiveness of individual and collaborative outputbased focus-on-form instructional tasks on the acquisition of English inversion structures by EFL learners. Moreover, it explored the developmental trend of learners’ inversion acquisition. To this end, 60 homogeneous EFL learners were assigned to individual and collaborative output groups. They were exposed to texts encompassing inversion structures for 12 instructional sessions. The task included dictogloss in both groups where the texts were reconstructed either individually or collaboratively. A pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest design was used to examine the effects of the 2 tasks. The learners’ process of acquisition was examined by parallel tests of inversion development. Results showed that collaborative task implementation was advantageous over individual task performance in both immediate and delayed posttests. Results did not reveal a linear additive process for the collaborative output group; however, the findings suggest that collaborative language production can enhance grammatical acquisition.