The official website of educator Jack C Richards

Use Textual Enhancement to Encourage Noticing

Submitted by Danny, Canada

Textual enhancement (e.g. by underlining, boldfacing, italicizing, capitalizing, or color coding) can be used to help students ‘notice’ forms or features they may not be aware of. The procedure involves:

  1. Select a particular grammar point that you think the learners need to attend to.
  2. Highlight that feature in the text using one of the textual enhancement techniques or their combination.
  3. Make sure that you do not highlight many different forms as it may distract the learners’ attention from meaning.
  4. Use strategies to keep learners attention on meaning.
  5. Do not provide any additional metalinguistic explanation.