in a better way (Batstone; 1994, 41), repeating the chain as needed in order to enhance the
knowledge of the target language. The importance of awareness is evident at this stage.
Skehan gives a good summary of research on this issue (1996):
Awareness enables more efficient solutions to the ‘matching’ problem (Klein 1986),
i.e. noticing the gap between one’s current language system and the language
one encounters. Similary, Schmidt (1994) proposes that awareness may enable
learners to appreciate better the instruction that they are receiving, especially
the correction that is being given. Awareness may also (Karmilloff-Smith 1986)
make it easier to transform and recombine material, to restructure, in other words,
as the structure of material is more available, and other organizational
possibilities become clear. Finally, awareness may help learners operate the sort
of dual systems outlined above, where the IeamerZlanguage user may need to
combine rale-based systems and exemplar-based systems during ongoing
performance (43)
All this is very relevant if one takes into account that the learner is the only one who makes
decisions about when to continue (or stop) renoticing and restructuring a specific linguistic
item.
This circle of noticing-structuring-renoticing-restructuring corresponds to what most
research in learning has identified as hypothesis formation and testing. It takes the form of a
structure made up of connected layers that take to proficiency (see Fig. 4.3). Bialystok
(1994,158), who offers a coherent "cognitive account of how language proficiency
develops", states that there are two aspects of cognition, analysis and control, whose
function is to increase competence. Analysis underlies the noticing-structuring process of the
first stages of language learning. Analysis is partly replaced by a control process, in which
the leamer∕user controls her language in order to decide which elements of it do not need
much attention, and become automatised, and which still need to be analysed. As was stated
before, the attention resources of human beings are limited. With regards to language use, in
order to become fluent, the learner has to control her attention and focus it on critical parts of
the language.
This transitional stage whose aim is to turn declarative knowledge into procedural
knowledge, that is, to use the language, and not only to know about it, is characterised by
instability, or variability (Bialystok; 1994,165). The language the learner produces, known as
interlanguage, varies in both dimensions, Synchronically and diachronically. Thus,
sometimes, the learner uses a grammatical structure in a correct form, sometimes she uses it
incorrectly. Sometimes she remembers a word, sometimes she forgets it. Sometimes she
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