In 1991, Sharwood Smith suggested another term, which is ‘input enhancement’, as another way of discussion on the role of grammar in second language teaching. Sharwood Smith (1991) defines input enhancement as ‘the process by which language input becomes salient to learners’ (118). In other words, input enhancement could be an approach to second language teaching, and refers to a deliberate attempt to make the target form in this input enhanced by visually altering its appearance in the text. Sharwood Smith (1991,1993) suggests many techniques which may be used in order to make input salient, such as colour coding, bold-facing, using error flags, stress, ‘intonation and gestures’, as well as pointing out and explaining construction using metalinguistic terminology. For example, grammatical English morphemes (third person’s singular s) could be bolded, or underlined. Using one or all of these techniques could draw learners’ attention to the target language form. This kind of input enhancement is known as ‘visual or textual enhancement.’ Sharwood Smith also indicates that one of the reasons for drawing students’ attention to the formal features of a second language has been viewed in a negative way is owing to formal teaching having been regularly connected with ‘the pedantic giving and testing of rules and lists of vocabulary items’ (1981:160). This needs to be changed because there are various ways (as mentioned above) of drawing learners’ attention to second language features which do not need to involve details of ‘metalinguistic discussion’.
In this case, input is enhanced in order to make particular L2 forms more salient. Furthermore, Sharwood Smith (1991:119) provides additional information concerning various input enhancement techniques concerning the degrees of ‘explicitness and elaboration’, which are necessary to letting learners access grammatical input. Explicitness refers to the learning and detail of the ‘attention-drawing mechanism’, with the degrees of explicitness being highly or less explicit. On one hand, highly explicit involves a rule explanation; on the other hand, the less explicit might be in the form of seeing the target feature highlighted without giving further information. Elaboration refers to the depth and amount of time that is engaged in applying the enhancement technique, for example ‘the facial gesture’.