A Study of Why Movies Are Suitable Study Materials for Noticing Activities: Based on The Middle

Skehan (1998) argues that second language learning is based not only on learning grammar structures but also on the learning of formulaic sequences. It is therefore important for learners to notice formulaic sequences of input. Noticing is the conscious awareness that is necessary to change 'input' to 'intake'. In this sense, noticing activities are necessary for L2 language development. This paper claims that movie materials are suitable for these activities for Korean students when they include captions, a Korean script, and a translation. In order to this, Hegelheimer, and Chapelle's conditions for noticing (2000) were used in this research. Two college students participated in the research, studying the American drama The Middle (Robinson, 2009). The findings show that the use of captions leads to comprehensible input of scenes and creates content schema that makes translation easier. Translation also supports comprehensible input of scenes as well as stimulating noticing through comparing L1 (Korean) with L2 (English). The findings also show that the two students noticed English language forms more when they had the help of a Korean script. Lastly, this research suggests a model for incorporating captions, a Korean script, and translation to improve how movie utterances are noticed.