Attention and awareness in second language acquisition

Abstract

Issues of attention “bear on every area of cognitive science” (Allport, 1989, p. 631). Attention, however, is not a unitary construct; many mechanisms have been proposed to explain how it affects different aspects of behavior and learning. Attentional mechanisms have been invoked to explain such diverse phenomena in second language acquisition (SLA) as variation in the accuracy, fluency and complexity of second language (L2) use in different social environments, and the effects of pedagogic task demands on learners’ spoken and written performance in experimental and classroom language learning settings. Availability of attentional resources has also been argued to predict the extent to which instructional conditions manipulating the focus of learners’ attention affect the quality of perception, and, as a consequence, memory for targeted aspects of input. Explaining variational phenomena implicates mechanisms of attention which are used to control action while using the L2. Explaining perceptual, learning, and memory phenomena implicates mechanisms of attention which are used to select (or inhibit) and mentally rehearse information in the L2 input. These two broad classes of attentional mechanisms interact to affect SLA in ways that researchers have explored in both experimental and classroom settings.

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