Comments on Rod Ellis's "The Structural Syllabus and Second Language Acquisition". Implicit Knowledge, Second Language Learning, and Syllabus Construction

Abstract

a In his TESOL Quarterly article (Vol. 27, No. 1, Spring 1993), Rod Ellis attempts to make a case for the role of a structural syllabus as a means to promote gradual mastery of implicit second language knowledge. Ellis proposes a two-dimensional model of skill learning which is similar to the analysis control model proposed by Bialystok (1982). However, the invocation of a distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge to replace one of Bialystok's constructs, the dimension of analysis, leads to confusion and theoretical incoherence because it is not clear how Ellis's definitions of implicit and explicit knowledge relate to similar distinctions in cognitive psychology and L2 research (e.g., Hulstijn, 1990; Logan, 1988; McLaughlin, 1987; Reber, 1989; Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977). No empirical evidence from this research is adduced to support assertions Ellis makes about implicit knowledge which are fundamental to his proposals for pedagogy. In particular, it is unclear how Ellis motivates claims about the nature of the interface between implicit and explicit knowledge, and the form of implicit knowledge. In his model of second language acquisition processes, Ellis replaces Bialystok's (1982) +/analyzed distinction with a distinction between two of knowledge, explicit and implicit. For Bialystok, this dimension represents a continuum of analysis, with early language being toward the unanalyzed end of the scale and analyzed language characterizing the later, more developed system. For Ellis this is a dichotomy between interfaced, but distinct implicit and explicit types of knowledge. Bialystok's dimension of control is referred to as the to procedural (Anderson, 1983) dimension by Ellis. Language development is characterized as the process whereby explicit declarative