ABSTRACT
Processing Instruction (PI) is an instructional technique that addresses both the learner’s attentional resources and the target form’s characteristics such as salience and communicative value (VanPatten, 1993, 1996).1 It seeks to change the way input is processed by the learner through provision of a clever mix of raw positive evidence, that is, practice in decoding input, and information about how the language works in the form of explicit information involving explanation of the target form as well as information about wrong processing strategies. (Although others may prefer the term explicit information, I use the terms explanation and explicit information interchangeably in the present paper.) Its input-focused practice is crucially structured so that learners need to attend to the target grammatical form/structure to understand the meaning and complete the activity (that is, the input practice involves task-essentialness; see Loschky & Bley-Vroman, 1993). The input is also manipulated so as to make it more salient: Only one form is presented at a time, and the key forms appear at the beginning of the sentence, a position that has been identified as more salient (Rosa & O’Neill, 1998). Grammar explanation is based on both linguistic and psycholinguistic principles and is geared to make learners aware of the need to change specific processing strategies. Out of the three components of instruction-explanation, structured input, and feedback-PI research has focused on the first two, leaving aside feedback as an uncontrolled variable. In this sense, PI research is no different from general research on the effects of explicit instruction (e.g., Alanen, 1995; de Graaff, 1997; N. Ellis, 1993; Robinson, 1996; Rosa & O’Neill, 1999; Spada & Lightbown, 1993; White, 1991).
