Attention, Awareness, and Output: Cognitive Foundations for Learning Complex Language Structures

Abstract

Learners who spend years in contact with a second language often continue to produce the same inaccuracies, even when their comprehension is excellent and their communication is fluent. This persistent gap between understanding and accurate use is especially visible with complex structures, that is, forms that are morphologically intricate, semantically opaque, or perceptually weak. A central question for second language research is why such forms resist acquisition even when they occur in the input again and again. One influential answer is that the critical variable is not the amount of input but the amount of attention that learners give to particular features of it.

This article, the first in a three-part series, examines the cognitive foundations of learning complex structures in an instructed setting. It begins with the claim that input becomes usable for learning only when it is noticed [9, pp. 129–158], and it asks what kind of attention and awareness this requires. The article then reviews research that has measured awareness directly, through verbal reports and eye-tracking, and considers the role of output production in drawing learners' attention to gaps in their knowledge [10, pp. 235–253; 12, pp. 371–391]. It also addresses the relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge, which determines how conscious attention can contribute to fluent performance [4, pp. 129–140].