Explicit contrastive instruction facilitates the acquisition of difficult L2 forms

Proponents of the cognitive information‐processing approach view linguistic input salience as an important factor in promoting SL acquisition. Salient input facilitates explicit learning by assisting the learners to attend to the new L2 forms, as they formulate new rules or restructure old ones. Attending to the input, learners may notice a specific linguistic feature in it. Noticing is defined as detecting the new form and rehearsing it in short‐term memory. Selinker (1992) theorises that learners often make an L1‐L2 equation which may result in erroneous rule formulation. This comparison may be related to rehearsal in short‐term memory. Sharwood Smith (1987) further suggests the promotion of enhanced contrastive input for difficult language items. Our study tested the effect which such input has on the acquisition of difficult grammatical structures in English by speakers of Hebrew. All the subjects were exposed to natural linguistic input while the experimental group was also exposed to contrastive linguistic input. The major finding was that the treatment significantly affected the experimental group's achievement on both recognition and production tasks. We concluded that explicit contrastive input facilitates noticing, and therefore is conducive to the acquisition of difficult L2 forms.