The Effects of Implicit and Explicit Instruction on Foreign Language Learners’ Working Memory Capacity and L2 Grammatical Knowledge

Abstract

This study investigated the role of implicit and explicit grammar instruction on expanding working memory capacity (WMC) and improving L2 grammatical knowledge. The participants were 30 L2 learners equally divided into two experimental classes. Before the treatment, a grammar pretest was used to measure their grammatical knowledge, and three tests (Forward Digit Span Test, Paired Associates Test, Operation Span Test) were used to measure their WMC. During the treatment, the explicit group studied grammar using the guided discovery, text-based teaching, and explicit feedback techniques, and the implicit group did so using textual enhancement, input flood, and implicit feedback techniques. At the end of the experiment, the same grammar test and WMC tests were used as posttests to check the effects of the treatments. The results showed that the implicit group had significantly outperformed the explicit group on WMC tests, while no such difference was observed between their grammar posttest scores.