The impact of input form in the learning of modifiers in English: Comparison between written input and audio-visual input

Teaching vocabulary has been attracting considerable interest in the studies of foreign language teaching. The research to date has tended to focus on discussing the alternative ways in teaching vocabulary rather than investigating the effect of the type of the input in vocabulary teaching. Moreover, no experimental research was done on teaching and learning modifiers through a novel as a written input or a film as an audio-visual input in Turkey. This indicates a need to investigate whether the type of input has an effect on teaching and learning modifiers. Therefore, this study aims to explore whether learning modifiers such as adjectives and adverbs via audio-visually enriched written input results in more extensive knowledge of modifiers than learning modifiers via written input. Fifty-four compulsory preparatory students whose departments were English Language and Literature and English Language Teaching participated in the study. In the study, mixed-method research design was adopted which benefitted from both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data were collected through the pre-test and post-test results of the control group (26) and experimental group (28). Qualitative data were collected through a semi-structured interview conducted with 54 students from the groups. Data were analyzed with Independent Samples T-tests, Paired Samples T-tests, and descriptive and frequency analysis. The results revealed that the students in the experimental group who were subject to both written input (novel) and audio-visually enriched written input (film) were more successful than the students in the control group who were only subject to written input (novel) in learning modifiers that they encountered during the treatments. Moreover, qualitative results were consistent with quantitative results of the study indicating that the student in the experimental group used more modifiers than the students in the control group during the interviews.