An Empirical Study On The Learners’ Noticing Of Synonymous Substitutions In Ielts Academic Reading Test From The Perspective Of Noticing Hypothesis

With the continuous strengthening of globalization and the rising upsurge of studying abroad,the improvement of IELTS score has become an urgent demand for a large number of students in China.IELTS is a global assessment system of English for overseas students and immigrants,which consists of four parts: listening,speaking,reading and writing.In recent years,a large number of scholars at home and abroad have made a close combination of noticing hypothesis and various aspects of second language acquisition(such as the development of second language pragmatic competence,College English Task-based Oral English,etc.),but little attention has been paid to the study of IELTS test,especially the combination point with the improvement of the students’ IELTS academic reading comprehension.This paper,based on the theory of Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis,which starts with the empirical research,and uses a quantitative and qualitative mixed research method to explore the students’ noticing to the synonymous substitutions in IELTS academic reading.This paper mainly studies and answers three questions: 1.What is the current situation of the students’ noticing to the synonymous substitutions in IELTS academic reading? 2.Do the students of different score levels pay different attention to synonymous substitutions in IELTS academic reading? What are they? 3.What are the potential reasons causing the learners’ negative noticing of synonymous substitutions in IELTS academic reading?In this study,100 students from Shangxuetang Language Training Studio(IELTS-training institute)in Taiyuan,Shanxi Province,are taken as the research subjects.An empirical investigation is carried out by combining the research methods of questionnaire,pretest and posttest in the form of test papers and one-to-one interview.Main results for this study are as follows:(1)No matter which score level,the students make lower attention level to the synonymous substitutions in IELTS academic reading,especially in noticing behaviors and noticing strategies,and the accuracy rate in the pretest is about 50%.After the subjects receiving the teacher’s “noticng training” on the vocabulary and phrases before the posttest,the correct of their noticing and recognition are significantly improved.(2)The learners in different score levels of varying noticing levels to the synonymous expressions,and the degree of attention increases with the growth of the subjects’ scores,which indicates that there is a positive correlation between the learners’ reading achievements and the noticing level to the synonymous substitutions.(3)Through the interview,it is found that the teachers neglect the emphasis and noticing of "synonymous substitutions" in IELTS academic reading and the students’ basic English knowledge is relatively weak,which results in the learners’ insufficient attention to synonymous substitutions in IELTS academic reading.This empirical study proves that noticing training plays an active role on students’ mastering the knowledge of synonymous substitutions before reading,which to a large extent demonstrates that noticing which belongs to the theory of noticing hypothesis is quite essential in second language acquisition.