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Part of
Second Language Acquisition Theory: The legacy of Professor Michael H. Long
Edited by Alessandro G. Benati and John W. Schwieter
[Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 14] 2022
► pp. 77–100

Chapter 4
Enhanced incidental learning

| University of Portsmouth

This chapter will focus on theory and research into enhanced incidental learning (EIL), which is an approach to facilitating learning from input. The chapter will draw comparisons between EIL and input enhancement (IE). Input enhancement (Sharwood-Smith, 1981, 1993) consists of overt increases in the perceptual salience of target items, and is intended to improve noticing. The possibility that input enhancement may only result in improved explicit knowledge will be examined. In contrast, EIL does not entail changes to the input itself, but covert modifications of the conditions under which the input is processed (Long, 2017). There will be discussion of existing empirical results which suggest EIL may give rise to implicit knowledge by means of detection rather than noticing.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Enhanced incidental learning and input enhancement: pedagogical needs and definition
  • 3.Enhanced incidental learning and input enhancement: Psycholinguistic rationale and implications
  • 4.Enhanced incidental learning and input enhancement: Empirical evidence
    • 4.1Input enhancement
    • 4.2Enhanced incidental learning
  • 5.Conclusion and directions for future research
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 11 August 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.14.04bor
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