I think there are many reasons why people notice certain things better
than other people, particularly when it comes to pronunciation.
But I'm sure the same is true in terms of noticing things in grammar.
Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.
Today I want to talk about noticing in language learning.
Uh, there's a thing called the noticing hypothesis, which has created some
controversy and in linguistic circles, but I'm going to talk about how noticing
influences our ability to learn language.
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So I have said before that one of the best descriptions of language learning of
what is involved in learning a language is something I heard at a conference of
language teachers in San Diego where, um, one of the people presenting there
said language learning consists of three things: the attitude of the learner,
the time spent with the language, not listening to explanations in English
or something, uh, so time spent with a language, attitude, time spent with
the language and the ability to notice.
Now I notice that I notice things when I'm learning a language and
I notice them at different times.
Now, apparently there is a thing called the noticing hypothesis, which
was proposed in 1960 by a professor.
And again, as with so much in the sort of academic approach to language learning, he
sort of, as I can understand it, trying to read the explanations online of noticing
hypothesis, he sort of presents a somewhat extreme case of the importance of noticing
to language acquisition, and therefore it became sort of in opposition to, or in
some ways in contradiction to what Krashen said about the importance of input, sort
of just naturally absorbing the language.
You know, he implies that you have to kind of deliberately notice
things to be able to acquire them.
And, uh, so I, you know, I, I invite you to Google for it, uh, Wikipedia
or elsewhere, and see if you can make sense of this linguistics debate.
I can't really, but I would like to talk about noticing.
My impression of the importance of noticing to language learning.
First of all, when we begin with a new language, we don't notice much.
It's all noise to us.
Like if you're trying to notice the pronunciation, you can't
really hear it that well.
And so everything is kind of like a blank slate, but certain things
start to fall into place naturally.
And as we, and so that we start to notice certain things.
We notice that, uh, you know, how certain things are pronounced and some
people may notice better than others.
But that's...
we notice more than other things that had previously been hidden come forward.
And we start to notice them a bit like a jigsaw.
So when you start a jigsaw puzzle, it's totally blank.
As you start to put some of the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle into place, you start to
see, you know, greater likelihood of where some of the pieces might fit and, and
language learning is very much like that.
So you start to notice that there's a gap here, that maybe
this is where this piece belongs.
And, uh, certainly that's been my experience, uh, you know, in Russian,
for example, um, you, you know, any un, um, accentuated syllable that
has the letter "o", what we would call the sound "o" in it becomes
"a", you don't notice that at first.
Uh, you know, and then eventually you start to notice that, and once
you've noticed that, now you're ready to notice something else.
And I don't know that there's any special order for these things,
except to say that the more things we have already noticed, the more
new things we can start to notice.
Now, is it a deliberate activity, that of noticing?
Okay.
I think first of all, the more we listen and read the more we naturally
almost subconsciously notice things because we're naturally, this is sort
of Krashen's input hypothesis, we're just gradually acquiring the language.
Our brain is starting to recognize certain patterns in the language, so that even
without deliberately trying to notice anything, we start to notice things.
All right.
Uh, and, but I had the experience as I listened to a mini story for
the 30th time, I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before.
So we are continuing to notice just through this process
of listening and reading.
However, okay, and some people notice better than others.
Uh, if, if someone pronounces something in a foreign language, I
will tend to notice that pronunciation, to pick up on it right away.
Right.
And I've said, you know, uh, when I was in Japan and I'd have visitors from north
America who would be introduced to Mr.
Sato, people would say Mr.
Sato, because it's written S A T O.
So they see the name card S A T O.
That should be Sato.
Uh, even though they hear him pronounce his own name.
So they don't notice the pronunciation.
Other people will immediately hear Sato and go Sato.
So, uh, the ability to notice varies with people.
Now, are there psychological reasons why some people notice better than others?
Some people are more willing to just go with what they hear,
whereas other people are more stuck with the way the word is written.
We have all kinds of examples of people.
You know, my father who was from Czechoslovakia "word" was "ward"
W O R D because to him, that's the way it should be pronounced.
That's how it's written.
So there was a certain resistance to the fact that in English
actually it's pronounced "word" is not pronounced "ward".
Um, so I think there are many reasons why people notice certain things
better than other people, particularly when it comes to pronunciation.
But I'm sure the same is true in terms of noticing things in grammar.
Now, what can help us notice?
First of all, we have to want to notice.
And second of all obviously a teacher or a grammatical
explanation can help us notice.
Like I have very often read an explanation of something and then I
start to notice it when I next see that in a text, whether it be a structure
or even some aspect of pronunciation, however, we have to be ready.
We have to be ready to receive that bit of information, because
if it comes too early, we don't know enough about the language, we
haven't experienced enough about the language for that hint to be useful.
So maybe having struggled with Russian for a certain amount of time
and, um, say I'm able to pronounce certain things at that point.
If someone points out that actually yeah, an accentuated, uh, uh, you know,
syllables with "o" are pronounced "a".
Now I notice it, if that had been told to me right up front at the
beginning, I don't think I would have been able to retain that.
And I think I would have missed it the next time and the next time,
the next time that it showed up.
So there is a question of timing.
And so far as noticing is concerned timing both in terms of what you're
going to naturally notice and also in terms of what, you know, teachers or
grammar resources or other explanations can...in terms of how useful they
can be in helping you to notice.
But I do feel that in order to, and I guess this is where I agree
with aspects of the, uh, noticing hypothesis, uh, you have to be able
to notice things first before you can actually start to use them yourself.
And, and we've all had the experience that once we noticed something that
for the longest time we never noticed, once we noticed it here, all of a
sudden you start to see it there.
And when you see it there and we see...
and, uh, there is a term for that, which I've forgotten, but once
certain things are either pointed out to us or we, we become aware of
them and we start to notice them.
Then we see them elsewhere.
And I think noticing is very much a part of your brain starting to, you know,
recognize patterns in the language so that initially your comprehension improves
and eventually your ability to pronounce things correctly or to, uh, you know,
use the structure correctly will improve.
So noticing is very much a part of the process.
I think the biggest contributor to our ability to notice is a quantity of content
that we consume, reading and listening.
Another important factor is our willingness to notice, our willingness
to accept this, that, in other words, we, we leave aside the
prejudices from our own language.
That the structure should be this way, because this is the
way we say it in our language.
This should be pronounced this way, because that's how it's pronounced
in our language or that's how that those are the values that those
letters have in our native language.
So, you know, more willingness to accept and, and also the desire
to want to hear what's going on.
So there is an element of wanting to notice, and then there's also the
sort of external factors that can help us notice such as a teacher,
such as somebody pointing something out, pointing out a mistake, for
example, uh, these are all part and parcel of what helps us to notice.
And I think we have to be able to notice in order to improve in a language.
So I strayed a bit from the sort of pure noticing hypothesis, but those
are the ways I have noticed that noticing helps me learn languages.
So, uh, thank you for listening.
Bye for now.