Tapping into Learners’ Internal Salience: Insights from an Implicit Focus on Form Study

초록

Recent research on implicit focus on form (FonF) has yielded insights that externally-created salience (by the teacher or researcher) does not guarantee learners’ internally-derived salience. In an attempt to explore ways of promoting salience at both ends, an implicit FonF study was conducted in order to examine if, and how, externally-generated noticing may converge with learners’ internally-generated noticing. The results revealed that increasing the salience of the target forms does not automatically result in learners’ noticing of these forms. Instead, findings suggest that noticing is largely dependent on learner-internal factors such as their developmental readiness vis-à-vis the target form, as well as other individual variables including their L1 and prior language-learning experience. Based on the results of the study, a number of a priori factors that need to be considered in achieving successful focus on form are discussed in order to explore how implicit FonF techniques may ideally tap into learners’ internal salience. Findings from the current study underscore the importance of respecting, and catering to learner-internal factors, such as their developmental readiness and their internal agenda for learning.

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