There is no consensus agreement concerning the role of noticing in SLA due to the directly unobservable nature of noticing as well as that the level of noticing may be affected by variables including attention being directed elsewhere, the level of language ability of learners, the complexity of information being processed and the speed or audibility of presentation (Schmidt, 1993). But it has rich pedagogical implications for teaching, especially in China. The reasons are as follows:
First, second language learning in China generally takes place in classroom, where teachers play the dominant role and learners learning is largely influenced by the teaching practice, it is necessary for any language teacher to pursue effective ways to promote more “input” into “intake” by raising students consciousness, such as input enhancements techniques: input flood, textual enhancement, structured input activity, explicit teaching etc. (Wong, 2005). For explicit knowledge can facilitate the learners comparing what is present in the input with what is the learners’ current interlanguage rule; and can make learners be more likely to notice these features in the natural input; as well as can as „monitor‟ to improve the accuracy of output (Ellis, 1999).
Second, due to the advocate of communicative teaching method that gives prominence to learner‟s fluency, the general teaching practice that exclusively concerns the learners‟ use of language understates the importance of learners‟ analysis and understanding of the forms. In China, where students are expected to take part in all kinds of exams, there are many advantages by raising learner‟s habit of observation and noticing the forms.
Last but not the least, since there are many factors influencing noticing, such as instruction, perceptual salience, frequency, task demands (Schmidt, 1990, Skehan, 1998). Thus, not only teachers who try every effort to draw students’s attention by various ways in class but also textbook compilers and people concerned should takes all those factors into consideration and provide teachers with good “hardware”. The joint efforts will yield a more desirable result--
cultivating more competent students.