Public lecture Richard Schmidt
On Thursday, 13 October 2011, Prof. Richard Schmidt, gives a public lecture at the Institute of Multilingualism,
in English on the following subject:
Attention, consciousness, and second language acquisition
17.15 - 18.45, Room K0.02
Abstract:
In contrast to the view that both second language competence and fluent performance rest almost entirely on a system of implicit (intuitive, non-verbalizable) structural knowledge that is passively acquired while interacting and processing input solely for meaning, the noticing hypothesis holds that SLA is largely driven by what learners pay attention to and notice in target language input and what they consider the significance of noticed input to be (Schmidt, 2001). In this talk, I will recall the origins of the noticing hypothesis and discuss both evidence for it and arguments and evidence against it. Looking ahead, I will suggest directions for exploring the explanatory role of attentional mechanisms in linking learning to motivation, aptitude, and memory systems, as well as instructional interventions such as task-based and content-based language teaching, input enhancement, recasts, and other techniques for making form-meaning connections salient to learners.