SLA 2: The role of input and noticing in SLA

Explicit knowledge facilitates implicit learning

1. prepares learners for noticing and intake or makes features salient (cf. Schmidt & Frota 1986)

2. may help noticing „the gap“:

• knowledge about language features makes it easier to compare one‘s own norms and the target norms

3. feeds internal monitoring:

• learners notice the gap between their output and what they know consciously

• Proposed by VanPatten

• Type of instruction that keeps meaning in focus

• Based on the Input Processing model:

– Learners must notice elements of input to reach acquisition

– „noticing“ (registration of certain form)

—> „processing“ (link to meaning)

• L2 knowledge commences in declarative form and is then changed into procedural form through communicative practice

• explicit knowledge can convert into implicit knowledge through practice

• Practice can take different forms

– communicative drills

– slot-and-frame patterns (X NEEDs VERBing)

– Real-life communicative practice

• Acquisition

• exposure to the target language

• Participation in natural communication situations

• Picking up of L2 forms without conscious attention to language form

• Learning: paying conscious attention to language in an effort to understand and memorize the rules

• Error correction

• Rule isolation

• only features that Richard Schmidt noticed in the input later appeared in output

• formal instruction

– acts as an aid to acquisition by providing the learner with hooks or points of access

– works by helping learners to pay selective attention to form and meaning in the input

– provides learners with tools that help them to recognize features which are in need of modification

• indirect effect of explicit knowledge: explicit knowledge as a facilitator

• Item-based implicit knowledge

consists of ready-made chunks of language (e.g. none of your business, I’m fine, head over heels)

• rule-based implicit knowledge

implicit knowledge consists of generalized and abstract structures which have been internalized

• What’s your name?

• zoo keeper

• The board needs cleaning.

• states that explicit knowledge does not 'mix' or interact with implicit knowledge in any way

• One may know a lot about the language and not be able to use it in communicative situations

• only ‘comprehensible input’ and not consciously learned knowledge can lead to acquisition

• We draw on implicit knowledge in unplanned language use: for easy and rapid language use

• explicit knowledge as declarative knowledge about rules is often used to edit or monitor production

• not the rules themselves become automatized, but rather the patterns, chunks or sentence frames