Input Enhancement and Noticing of English Tense-Aspect Contrasts by Yoruba L1 Secondary School Learners in Ekiti State

The noticing hypothesis in second language acquisition holds that explicit attention to form is a necessary condition for the conversion of input to intake, and input enhancement techniques that direct attention to target features without disrupting meaning-focused reading have been proposed as a pedagogically feasible means of promoting noticing. This study investigates the effect of typographic input enhancement on noticing and acquisition of English tense-aspect contrasts, specifically the simple past and past progressive distinction, by Yoruba L1 secondary school learners in Ekiti State. A pre-test, treatment, post-test, and delayed post-test design was implemented with three groups of forty SS2 students: a textual enhancement group receiving boldened and coloured target forms in reading texts, an explicit instruction group, and a comparison group receiving unenhanced reading. Think-aloud protocols were used to measure noticing during the treatment phase, and written production tasks assessed tense-aspect accuracy at each assessment point. Noticing frequency analysis shows significantly more target feature verbalization in both treatment groups compared to the comparison group, with the explicit instruction group showing the highest noticing rates. Accuracy on post-test measures shows significant gains for both treatment groups but not the comparison group, with the explicit instruction group maintaining advantages at delayed post-test while the enhancement group shows partial decay. The study contributes to noticing hypothesis research in African L1 learner contexts. Keywords: input enhancement, noticing, tense-aspect, Yoruba L1, second language acquisition.