Fundamental Aspects Of Incidental Learning And Communicative Language Learning

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A fundamental aspect of language acquisition is acquiring sufficient vocabulary to understand and convey meaning. As the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach is today´s contemporary method of teaching languages, the Grammar Translation Approach´s Focus on Forms (FonFs) became obsolete. Instead of the intentional teaching of language items, the CLT classroom focuses on incidental learning. Incidental learning is key principle of Focus on Form (FonF) and applied in the SLA classroom to give it a more naturalistic atmosphere.
Various studies have observed the impact of incidental learning vs. intentional learning. As expressed in Schmitt´s (2008) review, although learners acquired new vocabulary it was at the expense of acquiring adequate knowledge of …show more content…

Research support Although Nagy (1997) asserts that intentional teaching of vocabulary is a vain attempt to develop learners vocabulary learning, Nation (2001) disagrees. His argument is that intentional learning of words can add to learners incidental learning as they increase their conscious awareness of individual words. In doing so, learners develop a conscious awareness of 'noticing' selected words in the text. Not to mention strengthening learners´ strategic competence in reading. The Noticing Hypothesis claims that input needs to be 'noticed' or consciously registered for new forms or grammatical features to be acquired (Schmidt, 1990, 2001). It focuses on the principle of 'noticing' and 'noticing the gap' through conscious awareness. In short, learners become aware of gaps in their language proficiency and, therefore, motivated to give attention to selected forms to increase their comprehension or grammatical proficiency. Although noticing is said lacking empirical evidence, it is an essential factor in focus on form. In the task, input enhancement is used to assists learners in noticing quicker individual forms preselected by the

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