Developmental Comparisons of Implicit and Explicit Language Learning

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that children learn languages implicitly whereas older learners learn languages explicitly, and some have claimed that after puberty only explicit language learning is possible. However, older learners often receive more explicit instruction than child L2 learners, which may affect their learning strategies. This study teases apart the effects of age from the effects of instruction by comparing child and adolescent classroom learners of Spanish on tasks tapping implicit and explicit knowledge separately. Results show that implicitly instructed children favor implicit knowledge. Postpuberty learners receiving the same type of implicit instruction as the children pattern like the children, performing better on tasks tapping implicit knowledge, and unlike postpuberty learners who receive explicit grammar instruction and perform better on tasks tapping explicit knowledge—in other words, instruction trumps age. This suggests that the bias toward explicit learning in adulthood may be at least partially an artifact of explicit instruction.