Exploring the role of noticing in a three-stage second language writing task

The importance of noticing as a cognitive process in second language (L2) acquisition has been increasingly recognized by applied linguistics researchers. However, issues concerning how noticing is related to composing and subsequent feedback processing, and what impact such noticing has on L2 writing improvement, need to be addressed. We conducted a case study to investigate these issues with two Mandarin background adult English-as-a-second language (ESL) learners. The study documents the relationship of noticing, both in the composing stage (Stage 1) and the reformulation stage (Stage 2, where learners compare their own text to a reformulated version of it), to the improvement of the written product in the posttest (Stage 3) of a three-stage writing task. The findings suggest that while composing and reformulation promote noticing, the quality of noticing, which relates directly to L2 writing improvement, is different for learners with different levels of L2 proficiency. We argue that while promoting noticing is important, promoting the quality of that noticing is a more important issue to be addressed in L2 writing pedagogy.