Noticing as a Learning Strategy

Published on Friday, 21 September 2012 14:01

Written by Stephen Greene

Noticing as a Learning Strategy

Introduction
A few weeks ago we ran a Noricing Strategy Festival. We posted a number of articles and links to
activites that promote noticing as a learning strategy.This blog piece is a summary of those activities as
well as a brief article based on a recent talk I gave at the BRAZ TESOL conference in Rio.

Article
Noticing stated life when Richard Shmidt travelled to Brazil to learn Portuguese. He decided to record all
of the language he learnt in classes, as well as the language us encountered and used outside the class.
After a while he realised whenever he was introduced to something in class he started to notice it all
around him. He also became aware of the fact that the language he noticed was also the language he
was using.
This developed into the idea that students need to notice language in order to start the learning process.
It usually takes place in the classroom, and it means that the number of times we present something to
our students is irrelvant. Instead, the thing that is relevant is how noticeable it is to students.

One of the ways of making things noticeable is to get students to notice the gap. This entails making
students aware of a problem they have in order for them to want to learn something in order to overcome
that problem. This 'noticing the gap' idea is very important in a typical Task Based Learning classroom.
There is no universal acceptance that Noticing is an important element in language learning. Somebody
had this to say and somebody thought this. However, to my mind at least, if I had two students who were
alike in every respect, but one noticed more language than the other, I would expect the one who notices
to learn better and quicker.

Noticing as a Learning Strategy

When I taught in London I liked to encourage my students to notice language around them outside the
classroom. I would get them to eavesdrop on people's conversations and report back to the class about
them, or get them to look for adverts on bus shelters or read the headlines on newspapers. Many people,
and not just my students, have said that the best thing about going abroad to sudy is that you learn more
outside the class than in it.
When I left the UK, though, I thought that would be the end of using Noticing outside the classroom
because there wouldn't be much English around on an everyday basis. How wrong could I be? I have
found out that English is everywhere (not much of an insight I now realise) and that my best students are
those who exploit the English around them to help them learn more.

Noticing Presentation
Feel free to download the slides from the talk I gave on this subject. They were used in conjunction with
the activities below.

Activities
Unfortunately, not all my students are good at noticing English. It was for this reason that I have
developed a number of activities to use in class to encourage them to pay attention to the English around
them. Feel free to download any of the activities below and use them as you wish. I would love to hear
any feedback you might have after using them and if you have any other ideas for ways to encourage
students to notice language around them leave me a comment below.
(In order to download the material, you will have to register your email address with us. We
promise not to use your details for any other motive other than security. Unfortunately we have

had lots of problems with spammers recently and this seems to be the only way to protect
ourselves and out users.)

Noticing In class

Highlighting
This is a simple activity that teachers can use when presenting new language. Board management is
something that new teachers often overlook, but making things presentable, and in this case highlighting
the pertinent iformation, can really help to make language noticeable.

What Have We Done Today, Class?

I discovered this activity when I was doing a training course and we had a new teacher who was just
brilliant. She told us it was because she had had a teacher who asked her to reconstruct the class in the
last 5 minutes and say why they had done certain activities. It might not be to everyone's liking, but it
certainly worked for her; her teaching was excellent as was her English.

Why?
Some coursebooks don't encourage students to think critically and pay attention to the forms the students
are learning. The ideas here give a quick and easy set of questions to ask students.

Noticing on TV

Sitcom English
Students watch a lot of TV in English, but they rarely pay attention to it as a learning opportunity. After
doing an activity in class that uses a clip from a TV show, take the opportunity to discuss some of the
ways they could learn English at home, without even trying.

In The Game
I was watching a very boring game of football recently (I support a lot of bad teams so this happens a lot).
After a while I found I wasn't even watching the game anymore; instead I was paying attention to all the
flashing advertising on the sceens that surround the pitches in today's game. There is nearly always a lot

of English in these adverts, especially in international games. Use this activity to encourage students to
notice the English in the adverts during the quieter moments of a any sporting occasion.

Noticing and Technology

English for Facebook

Students are encouraged to use Facebook in English, rather than in their L1 in order to notice more
language. This is followed up by encouraging students to use software and other hardware in English as
well.

The IT Class
Students are amazed at the amount of Englishthey use in the area of Information Technology all the time
and don't actually realise it. This class aims to get students noticing the tools that they use and take for
granted, and start looking at the real meanings of these words.

Classroom Journey
This activity uses Google Streetview in the classroom. While giving directions or teaching lexis
associated with towns annd cities, students can be ebcouraged to notice the language in and around
shops. This can then hopefully be used by learners out in the real world.

Game On
This idea comes from the book 'Digital Play' by Kyle Mawer and Graham Stanley. The activity encourges
students to notice language as they are playing computer games.

Alphabet
This activity uses pictures of new technology and relates them to the sound of the first letter. These are
then used to teach or reinforce the letters of the alphabet. It encourages Noticing by getting students to
pay attention to the English words and sounds around them on a aday-to-day basis.

Noticing Everyday

Linguistic Landscape

As we walk around our local areas there is almost guaranteed to be some English around us, at least in a
city envrironement. However, while a lot of students 'see' English they rarely actively pay attention to it.
This activity, inspired by an article from Scott Thornbury's A-Z of Linguistics, encourages students to
notice language and to start thinking critically about it as well.

Walk and Talk

If you have a small group or a private class it can make a great change to get out of your normal
environment and go for a walk. While you are about it, point out the English that you come across.

Music Mix
An idea for a very successful project that I ran with teenage students over the course of a semestre that
used English language songs and encouraged them to pay attention not only to the lyrics, but also to
different types of language learning activities used in class.

English Loans
Students are often painfully aware that their own language has borrowed a lot of words from English.
Many are not also aware that this is a two-way process and that English has probably borrowed a lot
from their language. This activity looks at words that English has taken from Portuguse, but the basic
idea can be used for any other language.