Key concepts in ELTNoticingIn language classrooms, learners are surroundedby language from a variety of sources. As teacherswe want to help learners make the most of thislanguage, known as input, so that it enters theirworking systems and feeds into the learningprocess. Input which becomes part of thelearning process is known as intake. Inpsycholinguistic research, there is a particularinterest in the intake of grammar as a result oflearners paying conscious attention to the input;this kind of intake is known as noticing (Schmidt1990).The idea of encouraging noticing in classrooms ishardly new, and language teachers have for manyyears worked with some form of the traditionalpresentation stage. Research is beginning tosuggest ways in which we might improve upontradition, encouraging us to think moresystematically about how the classroompresentation of language might facilitate thenoticing of language.One interesting dimension here is explicitness. Wemay wish to make a feature of the grammar veryexplicit indeed to our learners, for example byproviding overt metalinguistic explanations.Alternatively, we could make it very implicit,perhaps by marking a target form in a differentcolour in the text (see Sharwood Smith 1991).As well as the text, it is also important to considerhow the task encourages learners to engage withthe input, since they very often manage tocomplete a presentation task without attendingto the target form at all, so that designing tasks fornoticing therefore means trying to focus learners'attention specifically on the target language (seeBatstone 1994:100-3).Noticing is a complex process: it involves theintake both of meaning and of form, and it takestime for learners to progress from initialrecognition to the point where they caninternalize the underlying rule. This argues forteachers to provide recurring opportunities forlearners to notice, since one noticing task is mostunlikely to be sufficient. More specifically, we maywant to work with different kinds of noticing taskin future in order to serve differentpsycholinguistic factors.One such factor is the form/meaning distinction.Tasks which require simultaneous processing of

form and of meaning may overload the learners'system, leading to less intake rather than more(Van Patten 1990). Indeed, it is often argued thatlearners need to process meaning before they cango on to internalize form (Swain 1985: 248). Soperhaps it makes sense to distinguish betweentasks designed simply for noticing grammaticalmeanings, and tasks for making sense of form/meaning connections (Van Patten 1994).Similarly, the cognitive load involved in noticingsuggests that learners may need time to makesense of new language before they can make sensewith it. In other words, it argues for receptivetasks to be clearly distinct from productive tasks,and for the former to precede the latter. Recentresearch suggests tasks which promote thepremature production of language may be lesseffective than tasks encouraging the receptiveprocessing of input (Van Patten 1994).Research into noticing is still in its infancy, butgiven its importance as a gateway to languagelearning, it should be a subject of vital interest forall those involved in language teaching.Rob Batstone, Institute of Education, University ofLondon

ReferencesBatstone, R. 1994. Grammar. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.Schmidt, R. 1990. 'The role of consciousness in

second language learning'. Applied Linguistics11: 129-58.

Sharwood Smith, M. 1991. 'Speaking to manyminds: on the relevance of different types oflanguage information for the L2 learner'.Second Language Research 7/2: 118-32.

Swain, M. 1985. 'Communicative competence:some roles of comprehensible input and com-prehensible output in its development' in S.Gass and C. Madden (eds.). Input in SecondLanguage Acquisition. Rowley, MA.: NewburyHouse.

Van Patten, B. 1990. 'Attending to form andcontent in the input'. Studies in Second Lan-guage Acquisition 12: 287-301

Van Patten, B. 1994. 'Explicit instruction andinput processing'. Studies in Second LanguageAcquisition 15: 22541.

ELT Journal Volume 50/3 July 1996 Oxford University Press 1996 273

at Aoyam

a Gakuin U

niversity on July 21, 2015http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/

Dow

nloaded from