ABSTRACT
Leow (2015) postulates in the first stage (input processing) of his model of the L2 learning process in ISLA three levels of intake (noticed, detected, attended). This study sought to test this model’s early stage tenets by addressing the roles of level of intake and type of linguistic item (grammatical vs. lexical) in adult L2 readers’ subsequent recognition and production. The concurrent procedure of eye-tracking (attention) was employed during the reading of a Spanish text. Ninety-six beginning learners of Spanish completed recognition and production assessments in a pretest-reading-posttest design. Results revealed that all intake groups recognized targets from the reading passage, but level of intake had no significant effect on production, underscoring the role of depth of processing at this input processing stage. Overall, there were no significant relationships between eye fixation measures and recognition. Also, significantly higher recognition scores were found for the grammatical form than for lexical items in several intake groups, possibly due to the underlying rule of the grammatical form. This study provides tentative evidence to support Leow's model.
