An Empirical Study On The Grammar Instruction From The Perspective Of Implicit And Explicit Learning Theory

Over the past two decades, implicit learning and explicit learning have been the rising concern in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), although their significance and effectiveness in SLA still remain a controversial issue. A great many studies have been conducted to make a comparison between implicit learning and explicit learning in ESL contexts where English is learned as the second language. But the relevant studies carried out in EFL setting are relatively few.Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate how the implicit approach and the explicit approach affect the acquisition of English grammatical rules in China where English is taught as a foreign language.Sixty second-year English majors form2parallel classes of Anhui Agricultural University participated in the present study. The pretest performed one day before the instructional treatment revealed that there was no significant difference between the two experimental groups in the prior proficiency level regarding the target construction, English relative clause. The two classes were divided into the experimental group and the controlled group to receive the same amount of treatment with two different types of instructions, implicit instruction and explicit instruction respectively, from the same teacher in their regular grammar classes:two45-minute classes per week for four weeks. Instructional materials mainly consisted of4reading passages involving target structure and relevant handouts. A posttest was conducted three days after all the instructional treatments to investigate whether the two groups were significantly different as a result of the different treatments. And a delayed posttest was carried out6weeks after all the instructional treatments to examine the retention and the effectiveness of the two types of instructional approaches.Data collection and analyses were performed by using SPSS.13.0. The results of t-tests revealed the advantage of the explicit group over the implicit group in both the posttest and the delayed posttest. The scores of both groups were numerically lower in the delayed posttest than those in the posttest. However, a significant difference between the posttest and the delayed posttest was only observed in the implicit group. The present study came to a conclusion that explicit rule explanation was facilitative to language acquisition, and that explicit instruction was more effective and durable than implicit instruction.Hopefully, some pedagogical implications could be provided in the findings of the present study and some light shed on English teaching and learning in China.