A Critical Examination of the Beliefs about Learning a Foreign Language at Primary School

language awareness and knowledge of how language works are again
increasing у regarded as important factors in facilitating achievement in formal
language learning contexts. Schmidt & Frcrta (1986) and Schmidt (1990)
suggest that conscious attention to form, 'noticing' and 'attending' to features in
the input are important if input is to be converted into intake in foreign language
learning. Schmidt hypothesises that 'subconscious Systemisation of input' is
impossible and that one could not 'learn a foreign language through subliminal
perception' (Schmidt, 1990:142). For Schmidt, intake is what the learner
consc’ousy notices and noticing applies to all aspects of language, phonology,
lexicon, grammatical structures and pragmatics. More recently, Van Lier (1996)
emphasised that both comprehension and language output required attention to
form and that consciousness and language awareness were essential
ingredients in successful language learning in educational settings’ (Van Lier,
1996: 69). Based on work by Vygotsky (1962) who defined consciousness as
'an awareness of the activity of the mind' and for whom consciousness included
both intellectual and affective components, the key functions Ofconsciousness
are seen in 'organising, controlling and evaluating experiences'. Conscious
learning is therefore not only seen as representing exp icit knowledge of rules
and structures:

"...outcomes or processes such as focusing attention, comprehending,
memoπsing and creative language use require the involvement of a conscious
mind (in interacton with its environment) which is aware of what it is doing and
what is going on." (Van Lier, 1996: 74)

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