Schmidt's Noticing Theory

1211 Words3 Pages

When a learner is learning a language, they acquire vocabulary and grammar through different means. Many articles have investigated how the fact of noticing a new word or a new grammatical form can facilitate higher proficiency in the specific language. Based on all that is been suggested about noticing, Schmidt proposed an Noticing Theory in 1990 which states that learners notice a particular grammatical or vocabulary feature of a language by noticing it first. This does not mean that only the noticing facilitate the acquisition but it is the essential first step in learning a language. According to Schmidt, the “hypothesis that input does not become intake for language learning unless it is noticed, that is, consciously registered” (Schmidt, …show more content…

One can notice by reading, listening, among other possibilities. In this paper, I am going to focus on a way of noticing through captions with videos to show that captions are useful for vocabulary acquisition (Winke et al., 2010 & 2013). Then I will show it is not just the captions that lead to vocabulary learning but when combined with the content familiarity of the videos been watched, there is a vocabulary acquisition as well (Winke et al., 2010 & 2013). My next article (Perez et al., 2014) will show that noticing (captions) does not just lead to all vocabulary acquisition but especially to incidental vocabulary acquisition. However, Yang, 2011 claimed that incidental vocabulary is not enough but noticing of self-errors leads to higher vocabulary acquisition. Finally, I will show that noticing through captions does not just lead to vocabulary acquisition but also to grammar acquisition (Mohammed, …show more content…

Captions are considered to be great tools of “learning language by helping learners to visualize what they hear, especially if the input is slightly beyond their linguistic ability” (Danan, 2004). According to this article, captions are also helpful in connecting what they hear to what they see, which leads to form-meaning mapping, which is helpful in foreign language acquisition. However, what is unknown about captions is how learners process them and what part do they focus their attention on and they balance what they hear, what they read (captions) and what they see (images) all together. Another question is whether captions are beneficial based on learners’

Open Document