IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION

The Effect Of Implicit And Explicit Instruction On The Acquisition Of Subject-Verb Agreement In English

Abstract

Grammar teaching has been and continues to be an area of some controversy and debate have directed to the emergence of a new classroom choice for language teachers: that of Focus on Form (as opposed to Focus on Meaning or Focus on FormS). Against this background of 'interesting times' for grammar teaching, this paper reports research into teachers' attitudes to grammar and its teaching and learning inside an EAP context. Responses from 48 EAP teachers in British university language centres made both quantitative and qualitative data. Results show that the majority of teachers in this study realise the worth of grammar for their scholars and possess a sophisticated comprehending of the troubles and issues involved. There is clues to support a favourable attitude to Focus on Form approaches among this group. A farther finding concerns the importance of student characteristics, needs and wishes in leveraging teachers' classroom actions in relation to grammar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table of Contents

 

INTRODUCTION4

DISCUSSION7

Explicit grammar teaching7

Implicit grammar teaching8

Exploration instead of explanation8

Contextualized grammar9

Advantages of grammar-discovery9

Grammar teaching and educator attitudes10

Approaches to syntax in the classroom10

Teacher attitudes to pedagogical grammar12

The research14

Methods and materials15

Subjects15

The function of syntax in language17

Explicit grammar teaching18

Instruction vs. Exposure22

Declarative and procedural knowledge23

The significance of conscious knowledge24

Comparison and compare of structures25

CONCLUSION26

REFERENCES28

Implicit And Explicit Instruction

 

Introduction

Grammar is being rehabilitated (e.g. Doughty and Williams 1998a) and recognised for what it has always been ( Thornbury and Thornbury): an essential, inescapable constituent of language use and language learning. Few would dispute nowadays that teaching and learning with a focus on pattern is valuable, if not indispensable.

The result of learning under explicit and implicit conditions has long been a controversial issue in the area of psychology. Most experimental studies in this area show that learning entails convoluted stimuli without conscious awareness. Most of these investigations utilised artificial dialects in their tasks as stimuli. However, in the domain of second dialect acquisition, where natural dialects are used, it is not clear how readily these findings can be generalized. In second language acquisition, the main body of research has been very much in response to Krashen's assertion that learners only discover through lifeless acquisition. Learning, he claims, which is attentive, does not lead to acquisition, which is lifeless, and acts only as a monitor. Conversely, some other researchers accept as factual that learner attention is essential for focus on forms to be beneficial to learners. Some of these researchers proceed so far as to claim that subliminal learning is impossible and that learning is the merchandise of the conscious discovering of forms.

However the main anxiety of language learning is not so much the distinction between conscious and unconscious learning. A more important issue here is the stage of explicitness and implicitness of learning. As Robinson (1996, p. 7) contends, “engaging in such research is probable to supply a coherent one-by-one groundwork for the speculations of second language theorists considering the span to which unconscious discovering of forms is, ...