Reformulation and reconstruction: tasks that promote noticing

by Scott Thornbury

In various guises reformulation and reconstruction tasks have a long tradition in ELT methodology. Since both task types foreground meaning, they fit well into a task-based model of instruction, and because the starting point in both cases is whole texts, their use is consistent with a discourse-oriented view of language. However, their potential for focusing learners’ attention on form (that is, noticing both what is present in input and absent in output) has received little attention. This article rehabilitates techniques that exploit both the meaning-driven and form-focused potential of these two task types.

Taken from ELT Journal Volume 51/4 (October 1997).

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You might be interested to know that the search function on version 2 of the CD-ROM shows that 15 out of the 699 documents included contain the word 'noticing'. These include:

Key Concepts in ELT: Noticing by Rob Batstone
(Volume 50/3: July 1996)

Review: Materials Development in ELT (ed. B. Tomlinson) by Luke Prodromou
(Volume 54/2: April 2000)

A classroom-based study: insights from a collaborative text reconstruction task
by Neomy Storch (Volume 52/4: October 1998)