The Role of Attention in SLA

I think the role of attention in learning language is quite obvious to influence whether the learner success to acquire the target language or fail to. That is, how learner attention may be manipulated for the purpose of enhancing it, and hence enhancing acquisition.

According to this research (Park & Han), there are two sources of attention. One is learner-external. The other is learner-internal. The attention is related to the salience. That is, the more salient the input is, the more attention it will garner, and hence more noticing. There are also two types of salience. One is external salience which is derived by a teacher or researcher. The other is internal salience that is born from the learner. Between two types of salience, internal salience is focused in this paper. Furthermore, L1 is regarded as a contribution factor to internal salience.

In this research, there are three research questions;
(1) What features of the L2 input do novice learners notice when exposed to the TL input for the very first time?
(2) What features of the L2 input do they notice after they have been taught some linguistic items of the TL?
(3) Do learners with different L1 backgrounds exhibit differential attentional behavior, and if so, to what extents is it related to their existing knowledge of the L2?

In this research, they found that L1 affects L2 input processing, particularly in the early stage of learning. There is an interaction between such influence and the typological distance between the L1 and the L2. In other words, if the L1 is typologically distant from the L2, the input- processing approach tends to be form-oriented. In contrast, if the L1 is typologically close to the L2 it tends to be meaning-oriented.

Reading this article, I suddenly remembered when I had roommates from Italy and Brazil. One day, one of my roommates, Lagia, from Italy, had argued with her boyfriend over the telephone in Italian. After she hung up the telephone, the other roommates, Marcella, from Brazil offered words of consolation. That time, I was very surprised at how Marcella understood what Lagia said. So, I asked Marcella whether she spoke Italian or not. She told me that Italian and Spanish are very similar. So, when she tried to listen to Italian carefully, she could understand what it meant.

Now, I understand why it was possible. That because, Italian and Spanish are typologically similar. It might be alike that Koreans can learn Japanese more easily than Chinese.

After I read this article, it is interested to me that learner’s current linguistic knowledge affect learning language.