Explicit Grammatical Knowledge Research Articles

The role of task-supported language teaching in the development of explicit and automatized explicit knowledge and learners’ task engagement: does practice meet perceptions?

Although the development of implicit grammatical knowledge is highly desirable, not all grammatical constructions could be learned implicitly. Therefore, one of the ultimate objectives of most English as Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms is to aid learners in developing their (automatic) explicit grammatical knowledge. Using progressively complex tasks and task-supported instructional conditions is one efficient way to materialize this objective. The current study investigates the extent to which performing focused dictogloss tasks accompanied with explicit instruction (EI) affects EFL learners’ explicit knowledge and automatized explicit knowledge of the past-counterfactual conditional structure. Sixty-seven upper-intermediate proficiency learners were assigned into four groups: task performance without any EI (Task- Only); prewriting EI (Pre-EI); prewriting EI also available during task enactment (Pre + online- EI); and post-writing EI with revision (Post-EI). Results indicated explicit knowledge gains for the Pre-EI and Pre + online-EI groups in the immediate and delayed posttests. However, no significant development appeared concerning the automatized explicit knowledge. Learners’ task engagement and the discrepancies and correspondences between the learning outcomes and learners’ and teachers’ perceptions are further discussed.

Measuring Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge in Second Language Acquisition

Previous research shows that due to non-facilitative first language (L1) transfer, second language (L2) speakers do not develop implicit knowledge of certain grammatical structures. Therefore, the present paper investigates whether L1-Sinhala–L2-English speakers could acquire implicit knowledge of English object pronouns. To achieve this goal, the paper compares data collected via an untimed grammaticality judgment task (untimed GJT) and an oral production task (OPT). The untimed GJT measured explicit knowledge, whereas implicit knowledge was measured by the OPT. The two tasks tested the knowledge of object pronouns by L2 English speakers. The object pronominalization differs in Sinhala and English. Object pronouns are expressed overtly in English. Sinhala has overt and null object pronouns. However, null object pronouns are ungrammatical in English. Under the facilitative transfer from Sinhala, L2 speakers would accept overt object pronouns (grammatical structure). On the other hand, under the non-facilitative transfer, they would accept null object pronouns (ungrammatical structure). A prediction was also made regarding the two tasks. If L2 English speakers had acquired explicit and implicit knowledge of object pronouns, they would be target-like on object pronouns in the two tasks. In the untimed GJT, the L2 speakers differentiated between grammatical and ungrammatical structures. However, they frequently used ungrammatical structures in the OPT. Therefore, the results suggest that implicit knowledge of object pronouns is still unavailable in Sinhala–English interlanguage.

Understanding text-based studies of linguistic development through goals for academic writing

Numerous studies of written language development have shown minimal improvement over the course of an instructional period, yet these solely text-based studies offer little explanation for the lack of changes in writers’ language because little is reported about the classroom and the participants. The purpose of this study is to use goal theory to better understand students’ instructional contexts and their writing behaviors as they relate to textual features. We focused on six students in two English for academic purposes (EAP) writing classes, in which we conducted observations and teacher interviews. Students filled out an open-ended survey, wrote two essays using keystroke logging software, and participated in stimulated recall sessions. We first evaluated how instructional goals and practices aligned with students’ goals and writing behaviors. We first found that the instructors’ and students’ language-related goals did not completely match. Students had the goal of improving their language, but teachers focused on more global writing issues. In addition, teachers had a goal that students become independent editors of their language, but students missed opportunities to edit. A secondary yet important methodological finding was that the use of timed writing tasks in text-based studies did not allow students to apply explicit grammatical knowledge that the instructors expected the students to have. Pedagogical, research design, and assessments implications are provided.

Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge of Japanese Junior High School Students: Differences between Grades and among Grammatical Items

Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge of Japanese Junior High School Students: Differences between Grades and among Grammatical Items

The Effect of unfocused direct and indirect written corrective feedback on the implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge and writing accuracy of Iranian EFL learners

The Effect of unfocused direct and indirect written corrective feedback on the implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge and writing accuracy of Iranian EFL learners

Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge of L2 English : Identification, Correction, and Provision of Rules

Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge of L2 English : Identification, Correction, and Provision of Rules

The Effect of Explicit Instruction through Combined Input-Output Tasks on the Acquisition of Indirect Reported Speech in English

<p>Grammar is being rehabilitated (e.g., Doughty & Williams 1998a) and recognized for what it has always been (Thornbury, 1997, 1998, cited in Burgess & Etherington, 2002): an essential, inescapable component of language use and language learning. Few would dispute nowadays that teaching and learning with a focus on form is valuable, if not indispensable. What perhaps is still the subject of debate is the degree of explicitness such teaching and learning should display. The ultimate goal of any instruction is to make L2 learning implicit, like L1 (due to ease of access and automaticity of it). The current study examines the effect of explicit instruction on the participants’ acquisition of explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge in the case of indirect reported speech. The descriptive-survey method was used in this research. The results revealed that this type of instruction fosters both short- and long-term acquisition of explicit grammatical knowledge. However, the study could not foster the acquisition of implicit knowledge.</p>

Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge in Predicting Reading Comprehension of Vietnamese EFL Learners

This study explored the predictive power of implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge in explaining the reading comprehension of Vietnamese EFL students and examined how these two types of grammatical knowledge could differently predict for students having dissimilar reading abilities. The participants of the study comprised 51 Vietnamese adult learners of English having different proficiency levels. They completed three English tests including a timed grammatical judgment tests, an untimed grammatical judgment test, and a reading comprehension test. Correlational and regression analyses were conducted, and the results indicated that both implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge significantly correlated with and significantly predicted reading comprehension. However, the two types of grammatical knowledge lost their correlation and predictive power when it came to the more proficient reading group. In the case of the lower level group, explicit grammatical knowledge did not correlate with or contribute to reading, but implicit grammatical knowledge remained as a significant contributor.

An inductive approach to grammar teaching in Grade 5 & 6 Irish immersion classes

This article describes quantitative findings from a mixed-methods exploratory study of the effectiveness of an explicit-inductive approach to grammar teaching in improving the linguistic accuracy of Grade 5 and 6 (n=274) students in 12 Irish immersion classes. A series of form-focused materials were designed to explicitly draw learners’ attention to the use of the genitive case in Irish over a four-week period. Students engaged in collaborative meta-talk when uncovering rule-based knowledge and they recorded explicit grammatical knowledge in a reflective language-learning journal. Results from a pre-test, post-test, delayed post-test design showed a highly statistically significant increase in the mean achievement of pupils from pre- to post-test, with a levelling off at delayed post-test. Interestingly, students’ increases in achievement were not dependent on initial student competency. This study points to the potential effectiveness of a social-constructivist explicit-inductive approach to improve the linguistic accuracy of students in immersion programmes.

Assessing Implicit and Explicit Grammatical Knowledge

The study of grammar has always had an important role in the history of foreign language teaching. Today, grammatical competence is seen as an integral part of communicative ability, which represents the aim of language learning and teaching process. The aim of this paper is to offer the most important theoretical views related to the grammatical competence and implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge. We will also try to establish grammatical descriptors based on the most frequent grammatical structures contained in the curriculum for Italian language in Montenegrin elementary schools at level A2. In order to achieve the goals we have set, we have tested 547 ninth grade students of 25 Montenegrin schools. The aim of the testing was to determine the extent to which the tested students fulfilled the requirements listed in the curriculum for Italian language. We have also determined their implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge. After the discussion of the results of the grammar test, we will try to find how the students’ achievement on grammatical tests can be improved. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n4p251

On FL Learners' Individual Differences in Grammar Learning and Their Grammatical Competence Training

In FL grammar teaching field, there are many researches concerning about students’ English grammatical learning and grammatical competence improvement, but the previous researches are mainly about foreign language learners’ grammar level as a whole, very few researches are about the individual differences in learners’ grammatical knowledge acquisition and competence improvement. This paper analyzes the individual differences that influence FL learners’ grammar acquisition and grammatical competence improvement through interview, questionnaire and observation, four college students majoring in English participated in the study. Then, basing on the Study of FL learners individual differences in grammar learning and the integration between explicit grammatical knowledge and implicit grammatical competence in grammar acquisition, this paper constructs an FL learners’ grammatical competence training model according to different students’ individuality, aiming at narrowing down the gap between top students and ordinary students’ grammatical competence in non-native context and the gap between FL learners’ English grammatical knowledge and their grammatical competence. The results, to a certain degree, will be beneficial to the improvement of FL grammar teaching quality.

English Grammar Automatic Output Model under Non-native Environment

In China, there has been a common phenomenon in English grammar teaching that much emphasis has been laid on the input of students’ English grammatical knowledge while little has been paid on the improvement of their grammatical competence, which directly leads to an obvious gap between students’ English grammatical knowledge and their grammatical competence. According to Anderson’s cognitive theory of ACT, learners will go through three stages (cognitive, associative and automatic stage) from declarative knowledge to procedural knowledge in acquiring the automatic skills. This paper studies the implication of cognitive theory of ACT in English Grammar acquisition, internalization and automatic output. Basing on the integration between explicit grammatical knowledge and implicit grammatical competence in grammar acquisition, we put forward an English grammar automatic output model, aiming at helping foreign language learners narrow down the gap between their grammatical knowledge and grammatical competence under non-native environment.

Les connaissances implicites et explicites en grammaire : quelle importance pour l’enseignement? Quelles conséquences?

This paper presents a review of research in cognitive psychology on implicit and explicit knowledge and learning from the point of view of written French didactic, focusing on its silent morphology, in order to draw consequences for teaching. Standard grammar exercises are then examined for the type of knowledge they require: to what extent do they prepare the students to write and revise their texts ? We show that most exercises are not adequate to develop either explicit or implicit knowledge of grammar.. Finally, initial results of an experimentation of two types of activities developping explicit grammatical knowledge, no error dictation and sentence of the day, are presented. Results are positive: experiments in 21classes of primary and secondary education show a strong effect on the ability of students to achieve grammatical agreements in French.

Teaching English tense and aspect with the help of cognitive grammar: An empirical study

Form-focused instruction is usually based on traditional practical/pedagogical grammar descriptions of grammatical features. The comparison of such traditional accounts with cognitive grammar (CG) descriptions seems to favor CG as a basis of pedagogical rules. This is due to the insistence of CG on the meaningfulness of grammar and its detailed analyses of the meanings of particular grammatical features. The differences between traditional and CG rules/descriptions are exemplified by juxtaposing the two kinds of principles concerning the use of the present simple and present progressive to refer to situations happening or existing at speech time. The descriptions provided the bases for the instructional treatment in a quasi-experimental study exploring the effectiveness of using CG descriptions of the two tenses, and of their interplay with stative (imperfective) and dynamic (perfective) verbs, and comparing this effectiveness with the value of grammar teaching relying on traditional accounts found in standard pedagogical grammars. The study involved 50 participants divided into three groups, with one of them constituting the control group and the other two being experimental ones. One of the latter received treatment based on CG descriptions and the other on traditional accounts. CG-based instruction was found to be at least moderately effective in terms of fostering mostly explicit grammatical knowledge and its effectiveness turned out be comparable to that of teaching based on traditional descriptions.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT IN TEACHER EDUCATION: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DIAGNOSTIC LANGUAGE TEST FOR TRAINEE TEACHERS OF GERMAN

ABSTRACT: This article describes the development and validation of a diagnostic test of German and its integration in a programme of formative assessment during a one-year initial teacher-training course. The test focuses on linguistic aspects that cause difficulty for trainee teachers of German as a foreign language and assesses implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge as well as students’ confidence in this knowledge. Administration of the test to 57 German speakers in four groups (first-year undergraduates, fourth-year undergraduates, postgraduate trainees, and native speakers) provided evidence of its reliability and validity.

Acquiring Explicit Grammatical Knowledge Using the Spanish Verbs Ser and Estar as Examples

The role of explicit and implicit acquisition of grammatical rules in second language learning was examined by assessing high school students performance after several years of study on the correct use of the Spanish verbs ser and estar. These two verbs are essentially equivalent in use to the English verb "to be," but there is a complex set of statements that specifies when each is to be used. A 100-item two-choice test in which students from several different high schools receiving instruction in the explicit principles of these two Spanish verbs or receiving immersion training in which no instruction in their grammatical principles was given were examined for the following five factors: (a) general achievement level, (b) comparison of grade level achievement, (c) time allotted to complete the 100-item test, (d) grammatical instruction prior to taking the 100-item test, and (e) comparison of instructional methodology. The results indicated that students receiving explicit instruction in the rules of ser and estar beyond the first year of study achieved slightly higher scores, but that the level of achievement was considered to be poor. Differences between groups for the remaining factors were not significant. It was concluded that successful application of explicitly learned grammatical rules, such as the rules for ser and estar, may not be achievable in the time frame of a two-year high school foreign language course. Considerations regarding implicit and explicit acquisition of grammatical rules in second language learning were presented.

Teachers' grammar on the electronic highway: Design criteria for TeleGram

This paper discusses the rationale and criteria for developing TeleGram, an electronic grammar database for English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers in Hong Kong. The paper begins by describing the importance of explicit grammatical knowledge in effective language teaching. It then moves on to describe the design criteria for TeleGram, which aims at providing a body of content knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge that is relevant to English language teaching. This discussion addresses two central issues which have implications for the selection and presentation of content for TeleGram: (a) How is a teachers' grammar different from a reference grammar?, and (b) How can information be presented more effectively in an electronic medium than a printed medium? The paper concludes by pointing out that TeleGram is still in its early stage of development and that teacher feedback will be used as a basis for revision.