The impact of processing instruction on the recognition and production of English derivational affixes among EFL learners

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of processing instruction (PI) as opposed to traditional deductive exercisebased intervention (TI) in teaching English derivational affixes. There was also a comparison non-intervention (NI) group, and the groups were posttested. To teach the target affixes via PI, new structured input tasks were developed. In all, 101 adult male and female lower-intermediate participants initially took part in the study, but this was later reduced to 71 as a result of the pretest, and so on. The results were analyzed through MANOVA and paired ttest. In recognition, PI and TI outperformed non-intervention, while PI and TI did not outperform one another. In production, TI outperformed the other groups, while the other groups did not outperform one another. More studies must be carried out before drawing any conclusions about the transferability of PI to output activities for teaching derivational affixes. The students were also interviewed to survey their attitudes. Affectively, PI created self-confidence and an enjoyable atmosphere among the learners. Also cognitively, PI was the only group that satisfied the participants in their ability to recognize and produce derivational affixes. We found PI a highly effective and positive approach for teaching recognizing derivational affixes. We also believe it to possess a high potential for teaching their production, as it gave the participants a good sense of self-confidence for the production of the affixes.