Although the worlds of EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and ESL (English as a Second Language) differ in respect of their focus, my experience of SLA (Second Language Acquisition) has undoubtedly informed my approach to Language Development at UAL. One debate in SLA is that between the idea that genuine learning – ‘language acquisition’ is a subconscious process, conscious learning having very little impact on actual production or comprehension (Krashen, 1981); and the thesis put forward by Schmidt (1990, p. 131) that consciousness is a useful part of learning because, amongst other things, it focuses on the importance of attention as a concept. This ‘noticing hypothesis’ posits that unless it is consciously registered – input does not become intake in language learning – and more broadly SLA is ‘driven by what learners pay attention to and become aware of’ (Schmidt, 2010). In essence people learn about the things they pay attention to – and do not learn much about the things they don’t (Ibid).
The aim behind my intervention in making ‘autonomous languages’ (Garcia, 2009) visible was less about learning these languages, and more about noticing them – the patterns, the differences, and whether this could help us empathize and understand each other culturally, using language as a cultural lens.
Before implementing the intervention, (after clearing the ethics form with supervisors and course leaders), I briefed the students about the action research project. I told them that we would be doing an exercise that would involve their participation, and my research would involve me asking them about what they thought and how they felt about doing the exercise, and/or seeing the exercise being done, and the product of the exercise. I also told them that, as is the case with research, we did not know what was going to happen.
I knew that I wanted to create a discussion around the product of the exercise, and that this would involve some metalinguistic framing, but I did not really plan anything beyond this. The intervention and the discussion would be an act of discovery both for myself and the learners. Once the exercise was completed and we had a whiteboard which centred on the ‘parts of speech’ forms in English with translations of the other languages of the learners (see example figure 1), my instinct was to focus the learners on what I could see – from my position – central to the process (Crouch and Pearce, 2015, p. 62).
The exercise itself was an adaptation of the ‘flipped classroom’ strategy, whereby students’ acquisition of knowledge prior to the class is practiced ‘through interaction with peers and teachers’ in the class time (AdvanceHE, 2017). However, in this instance, the knowledge would be that acquired through the lived experience of the learners: their first language. This also changes the power dynamic between myself and the learners – they are the experts in their own language for which they have access, but I do not, especially those languages that do not use Roman script (See 6. Noticing otherwise) .
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References
AdvanceHE (2017) flipped learning. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/flipped-learning#:~:text=A%20pedagogical%20approach%20in%20which,Assessment%20and%20feedback (Accessed 28 November 2025)
Crouch, C., and Pearce, J. (2015) Doing research in design. Bloomsbury
Krashen, S.D. (1981) Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Pergamon Press Inc.
Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, Vol. 11, pp. 17-46.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/applin/11.2.129
Schmidt, R. (2010). ‘Attention, awareness, and individual differences in language learning.’ In W. M. Chan, S. Chi, K. N. Cin, J. Istanto, M. Nagami, J.W. Sew, T. Suthiwan, & I. Walker, Proceedings of CLaSIC 2010 pp. 721-737. Singapore: National University of Singapore, Centre for Language Studies
