NOTICING AND RETENTION: APPLYING SCHMIDT’S NOTICING HYPOTHESIS TO MOBILE-MEDIATED VOCABULARY INPUT

Abstract

Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis holds that conscious registration of a linguistic form in the input — noticing — is the necessary condition for that form to become intake available for learning. Mobile applications, with their capacity to visually highlight, color-code, or otherwise foreground target vocabulary within input, offer a natural testing ground for this claim at the level of everyday classroom practice. This study examined whether visually enhanced mobile vocabulary input produces higher rates of noticing and stronger delayed retention than unenhanced mobile input among 9th grade EFL students. A quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control-group design was used with two groups of 15 ninth-grade students at Ixlos International School in Tashkent. One group received target vocabulary through a mobile application that visually enhanced target words (bold, color, on-screen highlighting); the other received the same vocabulary items through the same application with enhancement features disabled. Noticing was measured through an immediate post-exposure self-report checklist, and retention was measured through a delayed vocabulary test administered two weeks after the final input session. Results indicated higher noticing rates and stronger delayed retention in the enhanced-input group. Findings are discussed in relation to Schmidt’s (1990, 2001) noticing theory and Sharwood Smith’s (1991, 1993) input enhancement framework, with implications for the design of mobile vocabulary applications used in secondary EFL contexts.