The Importance of Noticing in Second Language Acquisition - Assignment Example

Running head: inserts here. Q1) Talk about the importance of noticing in second language acquisition. How does the learner notice thelanguage they acquire. There are three main areas of consciousness which are associated with language learning. These include awareness, intention and knowledge. The first belief, awareness, encapsulates noticing. It has been noted that what is noticed is eventually the input for learning. To acquire considerable gains in language acquisition and learning, noticing has to be powerful and a pre requisite for effective learning. It has been noted by a lot of observers, like Ellis, Lewis and Skehan that noticing is the first step in second language acquisition. It is noticing that ensures that input becomes intake before any processing takes place. This is a pre-requisite for the learner's integration into the developing inter-language system. Noticing thus the first stage in second language acquisition. (Gass, 1988) Balestone emphasizes on the importance of noticing by calling the "real gateway to subsequent learning". (Balestone, 1994) This has been asserted by Lynch as well who claims that noticing is the most essential ingredient of successful language learning. (Lynch, 2001) Various other researchers have marked out and pointed the importance of noticing in second language acquisition. Sharwood and Rutherford are to name a few. They believe that noticing leads to the other subsequent stages before the language is acquired in its entirety. After noticing, the processing phase takes form and once processing starts, the language gets integrated into the learner's mind. However noticing can be of various, forms. It can be in both conscious as well as unconscious states of mind. According to some authors, the assertion that "noticing the gap" is a conscious process is not right. They feel that it can't be a conscious process and there are far too many differences in languages that can be acquired consciously. It is not as simple as it looks like, but is a rather complex. Apart from this Truscott has criticized these founding's claiming that the foundations of hypothesis in cognitive psychology is weak and it can't be based on rational theory of languages. He feels that noticing is not a very legitimate and strong factor in second language acquisition. He believes that noticing is only important for the acquisition of met linguistic language which is acquiring the ability to change words, fill gaps, adapt to sentence manipulations and dictate grammar rules. Noticing acts a mediary between the input and the memory systems. Spotlight consciousness is given by short term memory and is instantiated by various influences on noticing. These are the main factors that influence noticing: Instruction, silence, task demand, perceptual silence, skills, frequency and comparing. Instruction plays an important role in laying the foundations for expectation settings about the language which are noticed by observers and adapted accordingly. Another language feature that is of considerable importance is frequency which comes up due to repeated use of the language by teachers. This helps the learner notice the features of the language and eventually learn them accordingly. Skills set required to be incommunicado for a particular language is yet another important element that assists noticing of language in humans. Q2) Corrective Feedback in Second Language Learning What are the types of feedback Different terms have been used interchangeably that identify corrective feedback in the second language acquisition literature. Some of these terms are corrective feedback, negative evidence and negative feedback. According to Chaudron (Chaudron, 1992) the word corrective feedback can be layered down to mean different things. A "treatment of error" could mean any teaching behavior that follows after an error has been made. These steps aim to inform the learner of the facts of the error. The treatment will not be observed from the student's response but it would rather work to elicit a student response. This is followed by "true correction" which works to eliminate the error from the learner's learning process so that it does not become a hindrance in further production. There are two types of feedback. It can be either explicit or implicit. Explicit is an explanation on the grammatical aspect of the error. Implicit correction is expressive. It could mean confirming it over and over again, silence and face expressions that relay confusion. Input can be taken from different factors. There is an environmental input as well. In this learners are provided feedback in two categories of their target language i.e. both positive and negative. Positive evidence would be informing the learners of what is acceptable from a grammatical point of view while negative evidence is about informing the learning what would be un-acceptable. Hypothesis testing substantiates the importance of corrective feedback in some of its models. In these models corrective feed back or negative data plays a pivotal role. If feedback is provided to the learner and correct form demonstrated to him, his learning can be further enhanced as he compares his production with that of someone else. This makes corrective feedback trigger hypothesis testing by providing the learner with an opportunity to create meaningful relationships. Corrective feedback which does not provide the right form, will force the learner to utilize his own resources and intellect to adapt the right way. Either way corrective feedback is helping him in second language acquisition. There is a lot of information available in feedback. The information rich feedback enables the learners to confirm, disconfirm and edit the hypothetical, transitional rules of improving their grammar. The improvement is dependent on the learner's willingness to learn and to adapt as well. Unless he is willing to take charge and learn from the information available in feedback, it won't help. This means that the learner should be able to distinguish between the way they are performing and the information that is available for the input they encounter. It has also been pointed out that corrective feedback provides the mechanism and sets the basis through which learners switch from their wrong ways to the correct ways. They end up formulating new ones. There has been a lot of influential research on the role of corrective feedback in SLA but from the models discussed in the aforementioned paragraphs it looks like, there is an ever growing belief that there corrective feedback has a direct relation with environmental factors and they are both just as important for language acquisition. According to Long " Environmental contributions to acquisition are mediated by selective attention and the learner's developing L2 processing capacity, and that the resources are brought together most usefully, although not exclusively, during negotiation for meaning." (Long, 1996) Q3.) one of the condition for optimal language learning is L2 learners can be should be involved in authentic tasks. Explain. The concept of authenticity is a very important in second language acquisition. This has been observed in the past forty years. This concept has received a lot of recognition in the field of second language acquisition. The literature has pointed out four types of authenticity. These are text authenticity, learner authenticity and classroom authenticity. This represents the binary concept of the idea. The first three forms of authenticity relate to correspondence where as the last one draws its meaning out from the authenticity of genesis. The paragraphs below reflect light on each of the three forms of authenticity. Text authenticity: There has a lot of been reference to authenticity in the canonical ELT texts. For instance authentic language is considered to be a combination of both authentic texts and authentic materials. It refers to the interaction between the second language acquisition and texts come materials. According to some scholars authenticity is loosely tied with a close approximation to the world beyond the classroom. Text authenticity directly impacts learner authenticity in appropriating the desired conventions that the language learner should know and be aware. It is against the back drop of the adoption of these desired conventions, the learner's response is evaluated and rectified. Competence authenticity: The result of second language acquisition as aspired by learners is an association with some form of competence in the language that is being taught to them. Competence authenticity is further divided into 3 major categories. These are: 1. Grammatical competence 2. Sociolinguistic competence 3. Strategic competence. Learner authenticity: The concept of learner authenticity is directly related to the concept of text authenticity. It cropped up as pre-requisite to the concept of text authenticity when it was gaining currency within the spheres of language teaching. Learner authenticity is directly dependent on the response of the language learner to what is written in the text. A response is considered to be apt and appropriate if the intention of the writer or the speaker have been understood and learned by the language learner. This also includes the standard conventions of the language. The learner has to know and acquire them. Given this fact, it is also important for the teachers to ensure that the learner is aware of all the appropriate notions of language that would help generate the required and expected response from the learner. Learner authenticity is thus directly related to text authenticity and modes of correspondence acquired. (ley, 1994) . Works Cited Balestone. (1994). Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chaudron. (1992). Input enhancement and rule presentation in second language acquisition. Manoa: Unpublished M.A thesis. Gass, S. (1988). Integrating research areas: a framework for second language studies. . Applied Linguistics , 198-217. ley, W. Y.-c. (1994). Authenticity revisited: text authenticity and learner authenticity . Long, M. (1996). Handbook of second language acquisition. New York: Academic Press. Lynch. (2001). Seeing what they mean: transcribing as a route to noticing. 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