Implicit Instruction Research Articles

Mastering Prepositions in English: Explicit versus Implicit Instruction

Mastering Prepositions in English: Explicit versus Implicit Instruction

Upotreba afektivnih strategija čitanja u osnovnoškolskoj nastavi nemačkog kao stranog jezika

The aim of the research was to determine the level of frequency of using affective reading strategies in teaching German as a foreign language at a primary school level. The tasks referred to examining the contribution of biological (gender and age) and external factors (assessment of reading activities in German) to the level of frequency of their use. The level of frequency of application of affective strategies as a dependent variable was measured against these independent variables. The descriptive method was used for processing and interpretation of the results, while the correlation method is used in the part of the paper in which we deal with the relationship between predictor variables and the cumulative score on the scale. At the same time, the research was supposed to show the extent to which an implicit strategic input as an independent variable contributes to the frequency of using the examined strategies. In this part, the method of an experiment with one group was used. The data collection technique was a survey, and its instrument was a questionnaire. The results show a low frequency of using affective strategies, which is more pronounced in female than in male pupils. With age, the examined phenomenon becomes less pronounced, while pupils with a higher achievement and better language competencies more often use affective strategies to manage their attitudes and emotions. After exposing the respondents to the strategic input, the statistically significant differences caused by exposing the pupils to an implicit teaching of affective strategies were determined by repeated measurements.

Exploring the role of strategy instruction: Young learners’ listening performance and strategy use

This paper reports on an exploratory investigation into the impacts of implicit instruction of listening strategies on strategy use and listening performance of young EFL learners in Turkey. Data from 34 lower-intermediate learners of English in two-4th grade-classes in a primary school were analysed to investigate to what extent their employment of listening strategies varied after 12-week-strategy instruction integrated into their listening activities, and whether there was any change in their awareness of top-down and bottom-up processes in listening comprehension. Qualitative instruments of listening interviews were employed in the experimental and control groups to explore young learners’ listening strategy use. Also, self-assessment grids and a pre- and post-test provided evidence of how the experimental group class had changed their reported strategy use and performance in listening comprehension. Analysis of the data revealed a difference in young learners’ listening performance and strategy use over the examined time period, including a reported change in awareness of listening, increase in self-confidence, and a greater willingness to engage in strategy use. These findings are discussed in terms of the development in listening comprehension in English. This study implies that listening strategy instruction should be integrated in second language listening classroom to better young learners’ listening.

What About Fluency? Implicit vs. Explicit Training Affects Artificial Mini-Language Production

AbstractA great deal of research explores how implicit vs. explicit instruction affects second language learners’ grammatical accuracy, generally finding that explicit instruction increases accuracy. However, no research to date has examined the impact of implicit/explicit instruction on learners’ fluency. Additionally, nearly all the research has only tested adult learners, despite strong claims about the effects of age on implicit vs. explicit language learning. This study tests the impact of implicit or explicit training on children’s and adults’ performance with an artificial mini-language. After seven days of training, fluency, accuracy, and explicit knowledge were measured. Implicit groups became significantly more fluent than explicit groups. Adults were more accurate than children, but training condition did not significantly affect accuracy. Adults and explicit groups developed more explicit knowledge than children and implicit groups, with no interactions between age and training condition. This study is one of the first to show measurable benefits for implicit second language instruction over explicit instruction: both children and adults produce sentences more fluently after implicit instruction.

Research on the Explicit and Implicit Instruction of English-Speaking Countries’ Culture for English Majors with the Assistance of Network Platform

With the rapid development of modern society, students majoring in English not only need to strengthen their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, but also have to learn more about the explicit and implicit culture of English-speaking countries to better improve the level of cultural communication. Against the backdrop of the fast development of the modern Internet technology, teachers are required to make full use of the Internet platform to improve students’ awareness of the explicit and implicit cultures of English-speaking countries. Based on the current situation of explicit and implicit teaching in English culture, this paper gives relevant teaching suggestions in order to guarantee the improvement of oral communication skills of English majors in the future.

EFL Students’ Beliefs about How They Learn Grammar Best

Learner beliefs about how they learn a language best play a vital role in the instructional process and the role of grammar instruction has been a much-debated topic in the research and practice of EFL instruction. This study explores learner beliefs about how they best learn grammar focusing on four construct pairs: meaning-focused versus form-focused instruction, focus on form versus focus on forms, explicit versus implicit instruction, and inductive versus deductive grammar instruction. Data were collected through a survey from 927 preparatory year and undergraduate students at an English-medium university in an English as a foreign language (EFL) setting. Results showed that regardless of year of study, students showed a preference for having grammar included as part of their lessons and course books, and although focus on form was reported to be the least preferred method of instruction, when given a choice between implicit versus explicit grammar instruction, all groups preferred explicit instruction.

Not All Words Are Equally Acquired: Transitional Probabilities and Instructions Affect the Electrophysiological Correlates of Statistical Learning.

Statistical learning (SL), the process of extracting regularities from the environment, is a fundamental skill of our cognitive system to structure the world regularly and predictably. SL has been studied using mainly behavioral tasks under implicit conditions and with triplets presenting the same level of difficulty, i.e., a mean transitional probability (TP) of 1.00. Yet, the neural mechanisms underlying SL under other learning conditions remain largely unknown. Here, we investigated the neurofunctional correlates of SL using triplets (i.e., three-syllable nonsense words) with a mean TP of 1.00 (easy “words”) and 0.50 (hard “words”) in an SL task performed under incidental (implicit) and intentional (explicit) conditions, to determine whether the same core mechanisms were recruited to assist learning. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants listened firstly to a continuous auditory stream made of the concatenation of four easy and four hard “words” under implicit instructions, and subsequently to another auditory stream made of the concatenation of four easy and four hard “words” drawn from another artificial language under explicit instructions. The stream in each of the SL tasks was presented in two consecutive blocks of ~3.5-min each (~7-min in total) to further examine how ERP components might change over time. Behavioral measures of SL were collected after the familiarization phase of each SL task by asking participants to perform a two-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) task. Results from the 2-AFC tasks revealed a moderate but reliable level of SL, with no differences between conditions. ERPs were, nevertheless, sensitive to the effect of TPs, showing larger amplitudes of N400 for easy “words,” as well as to the effect of instructions, with a reduced N250 for “words” presented under explicit conditions. Also, significant differences in the N100 were found as a result of the interaction between TPs, instructions, and the amount of exposure to the auditory stream. Taken together, our findings suggest that triplets’ predictability impacts the emergence of “words” representations in the brain both for statistical regularities extracted under incidental and intentional instructions, although the prior knowledge of the “words” seems to favor the recruitment of different SL mechanisms.

Using homework tutoring to promote self-regulated learning in deprived pupils: a case study in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT With the aim to provide proper educational support for socially and economically deprived students, the present study examined a homework tutoring programme that focused on self-regulated learning (SRL) and implemented at an afterschool setting in Hong Kong. The programme was designed according to Zimmerman’s SRL model, integrated explicit and implicit instruction, and took a social psychologist perspective. The findings from multiple sources of data showed that the overall effect of the programme was observed as small to moderate yet the tutees’ positive changes in the use of four SRL strategies were reported: managing time, monitoring the use of cognitive strategies in doing homework, maintaining motivation and handling distraction, and arranging the sequence of assignments. The present study confirms the role of SRL-based homework tutoring in the promotion of deprived pupils’ SRL capacity. This result may encourage more research efforts in the future to explore proper educational support for deprived students at after-school settings, with an ultimate aim to reduce the gap of inequality in education.

教學明示程度、學習認知風格與呈現模態對認知語言學為基礎之視覺輔助應用於介系詞教學成效之影響: 以台灣英語課室為例

This study investigates the roles of instruction explicitness and learning styles on the relative effectiveness of multimedia glossing with texts and cognitive linguistics-based image schemas presented in two modalities, i.e., static and animated, on Taiwanese college EFL students learning three polysemous prepositions: above, on, and over. Based on a pre-post-test design, the experiments consist of a free writing test and a gap-fill test, respectively used to gauge the active and passive aspects of learners’ receptive lexical gain. Three groups of intermediate learners were recruited, receiving the same text annotations but different treatments configured in presentation modes and explicitness: SI group with text-static imagery annotations under implicit instruction, AI group with text-animation annotations under implicit instruction, and AE group with text-animation annotations under explicit instruction. The results suggest the following: (1) animations, compared with static imagery, seem able to better enrich the meaningfulness of image schemas and elicit larger and more durable learning effects, especially on the more active aspects of the receptive gain; (2) explicit verbal cues enhanced the learning effects on the active aspects of the receptive gains; (3) visualizers benefit more from animations than verbalizers in both active and passive aspects of the receptive gains, especially if verbal cues are provided. Pedagogical suggestions include the utilization of image schema visual aids in a dynamic presentation mode accompanied by sufficient explicit instruction to optimize the effects of learning polysemous words.

A Research Investigation of Contextualized Grammar Instruction from the Perspective of English Language Lecturers and Students at Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University

This study investigated implicit versus explicit EFL grammar instruction by surveying the beliefs of university lecturers and students at the College of Languages and Translation at Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University/KSA regarding this significant issue. Many university lecturers who responded to the questionnaire instrument in the present study supported contextualized (implicit) grammar instruction. Likewise, open-ended questionnaire responses provided by a number of university students, at the above college, revealed that several students favored contextualized grammar instruction while explicit/conscious grammar instruction was the choice of a few of them. Meanwhile, a few students favored a combination of implicit and explicit grammar instruction. In light of the above findings, the author recommends the adoption of contextualized grammar instruction with appropriate attention be given to explicit grammar instruction.

A closer look at the interactional construction of choral responses in South African township schools

In order to better understand literacy practices in high poverty L2 contexts, we use a conversation analytic approach to study two forms of chorusing in Grade 3 classrooms in South African township schools: choral reading and choral answering. Based on more than 6 hours of video recorded classroom interaction, we show that choral reading aloud is initiated by explicit and implicit instructions, combined with intonational cues. Choral answering is initiated by yes/no questions, designedly incomplete utterances or known-answer questions, producing short answers. Teacher feedback in both forms is extremely limited. Choral practices risk limited individual student engagement and restrict development of language and cognitive skills. However, we also show that students demonstrate a high awareness of the subtleties of a variety of interactional “rules”. They are occasionally encouraged to produce their own answers and are capable of reading new pieces of text aloud, showing potential learning opportunities through classroom engagement.

The Effect of Different Approaches to Learning Strategy Instruction on Vocabulary Development by EFL learners

This research falls within the area of teaching English as a foreign language (FL). It focuses on the short-term effects of memory and cognitive strategies on learning vocabulary and sheds light on the approaches adopted by EFL teachers while teaching these strategies. It investigates whether these strategies are taught implicitly, explicitly or both. To conduct this study, two main tools were applied: the first was a questionnaire to evaluate the memory and cognitive strategies used by EFL teachers and intermediate learners; the second was a vocabulary test to investigate the effect of using memory and cognitive strategies on vocabulary learning. These tools were applied to the sample that included 36 intermediate learners who were divided into experimental and control groups and 30 EFL teachers. The data obtained was dealt with descriptively and analytically. The findings show that training students to use memory and cognitive strategies explicitly enhances vocabulary learning more than implicit instruction.

ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS' BELIEFS ABOUT GRAMMAR TEACHING IN CLASSROOM

This study investigated English as a Foreign Language teachers' beliefs toward grammar teaching in the classroom. This research paper aimed to explore EFL teachers' belief about grammar teaching and the factors influencing teachers in shaping their beliefs on grammar teaching. A qualitative study using a semi-structured interview with eight English as foreign language teachers of secondary schools in East Jakarta has been conducted. The result revealed that most teachers believed that grammar was essential. Explicit grammar teaching was also believed to be more effective to be implemented in teaching grammar, yet teachers still used both explicit and implicit instructions. Nonetheless, some teachers believed that implicit instruction that was suggested in the 2013 Curriculum was less effective due to the limited time of English learning in classroom practice. The factors shaping the teachers' beliefs involved the student factor and the teacher factors which included teachers' prior education and personal experiences. This research was expected to improve the teaching of grammar practices and suggest an effective approach to be implemented in teaching grammar in EFL context for teachers in classroom.

Promoting the correct production of English sounds in extensive reading-circle classes: Explicit vs. implicit pronunciation training

Correct pronunciation of English words is of vital significance for mutual intelligibility in the EFL context. Despite its prominence in L2 learning, teachers of English cannot decide whether and how to implement pronunciation practice into their teaching practices. For this reason, pronunciation training is widely neglected in language classes or learners of English might learn incorrect pronunciation of segmental units causing fossilization in L2 setting. The importance of pronunciation training has been highlighted in the related literature. Keeping this fact in mind, this study aims to explore whether explicit pronunciation instruction has a superiority over implicit instruction in extensive reading classes. To reach this purpose, two groups of successive B1-level Intensive English Program (IEP) students were chosen through convenience sampling technique. Before training, both groups were given a pre-test of segmental unit pronunciation consisting of the most frequented words in the book used for the extensive reading classes at B1 level. Then the participants in the control group received implicit pronunciation training in which the language instructor did not directly focus on phonemic properties of English sounds. However, explicit pronunciation training was implemented into the teaching practices in the experimental group. The teaching period lasted eight weeks, and following this period both groups were given a post-test to unravel the level of improvement in each group. The results of this study revealed that explicit pronunciation training is more advantageous for B1 level students than the implicit one due to various reasons.

What the Eyes Hear: An Eye-Tracking Study on Phonological Awareness in Emirati Arabic.

Phonological awareness is the ability to perceive and manipulate the sounds of spoken words. It is considered a good predictor of reading and spelling abilities. In the current study, we used an eye-tracking procedure to measure fixation differences while adults completed three conditions of phonological awareness in Emirati Arabic (EA): (1) explicit instructions for onset consonant matching (OCM), (2) implicit instructions for segmentation of initial consonant (SIC), and (3) rhyme matching (RM). We hypothesized that fixation indices would vary according to the experimental conditions. We expected explicit instructions to facilitate task performance. Thus, eye movements should reflect more efficient fixation patterns in the explicit OCM condition in comparison to the implicit SIC condition. Moreover, since Arabic is consonant-based, we hypothesized that participants would perform better in the consonant conditions (i.e., OCM and SIC) than in the rhyme condition (i.e., RM). Finally, we expected that providing feedback during practice trials would facilitate participants’ performance overall. Response accuracy, expressed as a percentage of correct responses, was recorded alongside eye movement data. Results show that performance was significantly compromised in the RM condition, where targets received more fixations of longer average duration, and significantly longer gaze durations in comparison to the OCM and SIC conditions. Response accuracy was also significantly lower in the RM condition. Our results indicate that eye-tracking can be used as a tool to test phonological awareness skills and shows differences in performance between tasks containing a vowel or consonant manipulation.

Ripple effect of a clinical teaching fellow programme in an Australian paediatric hospital.

Bedside teaching performed by experienced clinicians is an expected component of medical student training. As clinicians often have high clinical demands and a lack of formal training in teaching methods, clinical teaching fellowships have been established. In clinical teaching fellowships, clinicians with an interest and expertise in medical education provide medical students with standardised teaching. Studies about the impact of clinical teaching fellowships have demonstrated benefits for both clinical teaching fellows (CTFs) and medical students. However, studies have not evaluated the impact of these fellowships on other clinicians or learning relationships within the institution. In this study, we aimed to address this gap by gathering data on the perspectives of CTFs, medical students and hospital consultants. A mixed-method design was used, utilising a combination of surveys for CTFs, medical students and hospital consultants and semi-structured telephone interviews for CTFs. Quantitative and qualitative data were obtained. The combination of data from CTFs, medical students and consultants enabled a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of the CTF programme within the institution. Although benefits were identified for CTFs and medical students, the consultant group noted that they were less involved in teaching medical students and that the CTFs were not well integrated into the ward team. This research highlights the importance of considering not only direct outcomes of teaching and learning but broader influences on more implicit teaching opportunities and relationships within hospital teams.

THE EFFECTS OF IMPLICIT VERSUS EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS TO TEACH REFUSAL STRATEGIES ON STUDENTS’ SOCIOPRAGMATIC AND PRAGMALINGUISTIC COMPETENCE

Abstract
 The purposes of the study were to explain the effects of implicit instruction on student’s sociopragmatic competences, implicit instructions on students’ pragmalinguistic competences, explicit instructions on students’ sociopragmatic competences, explicit instructions on students’ pragmalinguistic competences, the differences between implicit and explicit instructions on students’ sociopragmatic competences, the differences between implicit and explicit instructions on student’s pragmalinguistic competences, and the interaction between instructions with the students’ sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competences. The study used a quantitative research by using experimental factorial design 2x2. The data were taken from 80 second semester students at English Language Education Study Program at STAIN. The result of the study revealed that the mean score of post-test in implicit instruction on students’ sociopragmatic was 80.000 while explicit 92.550. Meanwhile, the mean score of post-test in implicit instruction on students’ pragmalinguistic was 83.000 while explicit 95.5000. It could be concluded that explicit has better effect to teach refusal strategies than implicit instruction on students’ sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competence based on the difference between the means score on implicit and explicit.

The Effect of Interventionist Instructions of English Conversational Implicatures on Iranian EFL Intermediate Level Learners’ Pragmatic Competence Development

Over recent years, pragmatic knowledge has been a major area of interest within the field of second language acquisition. Despite this, most studies available in the literature have only focused on testing and analyzing L2 learners’ knowledge of speech acts such as request and suggestion structures. However, pragmatic competence stretches beyond these structures to encompass more significant issues including conversational implicatures, a key element in interactional conversations. This paper seeks to remedy the problem by analyzing the effects of explicit vs. implicit instructions of implicatures on developing intermediate EFL learners’ pragmatic competence in a pre-test, post-test, and delayed-post-test equivalent-groups research design. The participants were 63 intermediate EFL learners randomly assigned into two experimental groups and a control group. The first experimental group received explicit instructions on conversational implicatures and the second one received implicit instructions. The results revealed that the explicit group outperformed the implicit group. Accordingly, explicit instruction had priority over implicit instruction leading to a significant increase in learners’ pragmatic competence development. The results also indicated that explicitly instructed materials enjoyed significantly greater chances of retention after a one-week delay.

Applying Effective Teaching Strategies in Dual Language Immersion Portuguese Classrooms

Due to the relevance of the discussions on the use of counterbalance for content-based and form-focused second language instruction, the purpose of this study is to present some pedagogical strategies to teach and reinforce the correct use of articles, gender and number of nouns in Portuguese when teaching Language and Arts (first grade) and Science (sixth grade) in the Dual Language Immersion (DLI) program in Utah. By using the learning targets concept from Moss and Brookhart (2012), students are guided to keep in mind the most critical learning outcomes for the proposed subject regarding content and language aspects. Studies from Lyster and Tedick (2014) show that there must be a counterbalance of implicit and explicit teaching of the language structure once students in immersion programs are in a school environment and not genuinely immersed in the language and culture as if they were living in the country of the target language. After applying strategies based on these authors, positive results are evident in students' speaking and writing skills.

The effects of explicit and implicit teaching of connectors on the reading comprehension performance of Iranian EFL learners

Reading comprehension is considered a salient source of input and an important language skill in English as Foreign Language (EFL) learning contexts. Moreover, connectors are regarded as main const...