ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses some depth of processing or cognitive effort employed by the learner during the second language (L2) learning process. The inclusion of orienting tasks was first found in studies of incidental learning in the late 1960s/early 1970s. These orienting tasks are employed to further facilitate processing of the target stimuli under incidental conditions without mentioning the recall tasks or other forms of assessment of the target stimuli. Within the incidental L2 vocabulary learning recently employed the concurrent procedure of eye-tracking to establish the role of attention in incidental L2 vocabulary learning. This debate highlighted a crucial difference between stages at which cognitive constructs are being addressed. There is also a current methodological debate that has highlighted a crucial difference between stages at which cognitive constructs are being addressed. Pedagogical implications can offers investigating incidental learning conditions, researchers may need to address naturally occurring languages instead of the typical semi-artificial languages or lexicons employed in the research designs.