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

This study investigated the effectiveness of individual and collaborative outputbasedfocus-on-form instructional tasks on the acquisition of English inversionstructures by EFL learners. Moreover, it explored the developmental trend oflearners’ inversion acquisition. To this end, 60 homogeneous EFL learners wereassigned to individual and collaborative output groups. They were exposed to textsencompassing inversion structures for 12 instructional sessions. The task includeddictogloss in both groups where the texts were reconstructed either individually orcollaboratively. A pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest design was used to examinethe effects of the 2 tasks. The learners’ process of acquisition was examined byparallel tests of inversion development. Results showed that collaborative taskimplementation was advantageous over individual task performance in bothimmediate and delayed posttests. Results did not reveal a linear additive process forthe collaborative output group; however, the findings suggest that collaborativelanguage production can enhance grammatical acquisition.