SELS Dialogues Journal Volume 3 Issue 1

Research Initiatives
A contextualized presentation of input using video
material as a medium of instruction has benefitted
language learners (Egbert, 2005). In fact, technological
facilities have the potential to provide rewards to L2
learners as they are more appealing in nature than
other kinds of material used for teaching and learning.
When such material is used along with explicit treatment
of language forms followed by relevant communicative
practice for self-expression by L2 learners, it creates
a unique effect on the learning process. Through
pedagogical analysis, it seems that working on the
form of the structures in the speeches in video input
materials turned out to be a very strong instrument that
could be utilized by teachers as the instructional means
in the classroom. More interestingly, the video input
materials used in the present study were applied as
an instrument for a listening activity first and foremost.
In fact, the students primarily focused on the subjectmatter
and content of the video input materials rather
than the sentences and structures used by speakers
in the video clips. This makes it clear that at the very
subconscious level, language learners process the
linguistic code, and through the focus on form raised
through explicit manipulation of linguistic data (by the
teacher), they later transferred such processed data into
their subconscious; this could improve the experimental
group’s performance in the post-test rather than in
the control group’s performance. For example, the
linguistic contents of the video input material have
proved efficient to be processed by the learners in the
classroom when the course instructor provided explicit
instruction on those syntactic forms. Also, it can be
inferred that the teacher’s further intervention as the
instructor of the target forms (compound and complex
structures) puts the participants in the experimental
group under stronger influence by video input materials
compared to the control group for the L2 development.
The video input materials used for treatment in the
present research paved the way for real-world tasks
to be fulfilled by the students. Although the focus
of treatment in the present research was explicit
instruction of the targeted structures, the authentic
communicative nature of the video input materials in
addition to the class discussions approved the fact
that paying attention to linguistic elements, when the
focus is on meaning or communication purposes, can
bring about significant results for second language
teaching and learning. Better performance in learning
coordination and subordination structures by the
participants in the experimental group offers some
sound reasons for such superiority. On one hand,
there was much exposure to L2 authentic material
which was originally designed and aimed at addressing
English native speakers i.e., the video input materials
used in the treatment were not designed to be used
as language teaching material, and hence they served
as authentic input in L2. On the other hand, the tasks
assigned and followed by the course teacher were
of such a nature that they called for communication
of meaning, or “negotiation of meaning” as the main
element of task-based language teaching (TBLT)
(Kumaravadivelu, 2006, p.65). In such an approach,
the control over grammar structures is gained through
exposure to L2 real samples with some degree of
consciousness-raising implemented by the teacher.
This was done by the teacher in his experimental group
through selecting sentences from the lectures which
included coordination and subordination structures
(compound or complex sentences). Also, the teacher
facilitated the discussion through writing them on the
whiteboard and encouraging the learners to discuss ;
as a result, the experimental group participants were
able to express ideas in a more elaborate manner.
The messages in the material were of a nature which
necessitated the experimental group’s participants
to use the relatively complicated language structures.
Since these participants were always led to the
main theme of the lectures by the teacher during
the whole course, they were forced to apply and put
into practice all the language resources available to
them in the input. These language resources varied
from the vocabulary items in the lectures to different
grammatical structures. Essentially, the richness and
resourcefulness of the input as well as the requirement
for communicating the ideas of the lectures by the
participants in the experimental group, propelled them
to be engaged in real task of communication where the
exchange of meaning was the norm while the use of
compound and complex language structures was at the
service of fulfilling the objectives of true communication.
This finding corresponds to the theory of negotiation of
meaning (Ellis, 2008).
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