Noticing and Text-Based Chat Chun Lai and Yong Zhao

Introduction This study found that text-based online chat promotes noticing more than face-to-face conversations, especially in terms of learners’ noticing of their own linguistic mistakes. According to Schmidt(2001), noticing plays a crucial role in SLA. Attention is essential for learning. Text-based online chat has great potential of increasing noticing for two reasons

a) it allows conversation to flow at a slower pace. b) it saves texts in such as a manner that users can access previous message.

Literature Review Schmidt (1990) Noticing Hypothesis Conscious noticing of a mismatch between one’s language production and the target form is a necessary and sufficient condition for second language acquisition. Strong version – noticing is necessary and sufficient condition for 2nd language acquisition. Weak version – noticing is necessary but not sufficient for 2nd language acquisition.

Literature Review Tomlin and Villa (1994) Attention has three distinct components, i.e. Alertness, Orientation and Detection. Their view differs from Schmidt. They claim that detection, both with and without awareness, is sufficient for learning.

Literature Review Gass (1997) regarded noticing as a necessary condition under which input gets transformed into intake. Gass and Selinker (2001) – noticing or selective attention is “at the heart of the interaction hypothesis”.

Contextual Factors and Noticing There is evidence suggesting that L2 learners do notice the interactional feedback from their interlocutors during oral interactions. There was a positive relationship between working memory capacities and their noticing of interactional feedback.

Contextual Factors and Noticing Individual differences such as pattern recognition ability, memory of contingent input might affect noticing. Different learning conditions and tasks that impose different demands on language processing load might affect noticing.

Contextual Factors and Noticing Izumi (2002) suggests that modality ( written vs oral mode ) might lead to different levels of noticing. Sanz (1997) finds that the quality of learner performance varied depending on whether they performed the task in written mode or in oral mode.

Research Questions 1) to explore the role of noticing during text-based online chatting 2) to add to emerging literature on the contextual factors that affect noticing. 3) to find out whether text-based online chat would help L2 learners notice problematic linguistic output more than in face-to-face interaction.

Noticing of One’s Own Errors Longer processing time and relative permanency of the text facilitate noticing of learners’ own errors. A great amount of processing time is needed in the monitoring phase of second language production. The lack of paralinguistic cues have made the participants feel less time pressure.

Noticing of One’s Own Errors The self-editing capacity increased the learners’ noticing of their own errors.

Noticing of Interactional Feedback The majority (69%) of negotiation of meaning in online chat was expressed in a more explicit manner. It is easier to notice than the negotiation of meaning during face-to-face conversation. However, the paralinguistic cues available during negotiation of meaning in face-to-face conversation might have compensated the lack of verbal explicitness.

Limitations Small sample size Familiarity with the technology. Time-on-task effect

Conclusion Online chat has the potential of promoting the noticing of negotiation of meaning and noticing of one’s own errors. Negotiation interaction did occur in text-based online chat because there are a) high frequency of recasts b) majority of recasts were on grammatical items c) all of the recasts were raised in explicit manner