Study On The Correlation Between English Implicit,Explicit Grammatical Knowledge And Reading Ability

Since the 1970 s,in the grammar research,the distinction on grammar knowledge has been one of the heated topics.In recent years,the study of second language acquisition has differentiated between two types of grammatical knowledge,which are implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge.Numerous researchers have discussed definitions and measurements of those two types of grammatical knowledge in second language acquisition.In empirical researches,researchers pay more attention to the relation between implicit,explicit grammatical knowledge and the learners' English proficiency.However,there are limited researches on the relation between English implicit,explicit grammatical knowledge and reading ability.The present study aims to analyze the correlation between second language learners' implicit,explicit grammatical knowledge and their reading ability,hoping to help English teachers and learners better understand the importance of the two types of grammatical knowledge in reading comprehension and provide some reference for future grammar teaching learning in terms of implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge.The present study takes 138 freshmen of non-English majors in Lanzhou University of Technology as research subjects.The Vocabulary Level Test is given firstly to measure the subjects' vocabulary level and the score is used as a control variable in later hierarchical regression analysis.Next,the Untimed Grammatical Judgment Test(GJT)and the Metalinguistic Knowledge Test(MKT)are used to measure the L2 learners' explicit grammatical knowledge.The Timed GJT is used to measure their implicit grammatical knowledge.Besides,in the present study,the author gives two reading comprehension tests,one Timed reading comprehension test,one Untimed Reading Comprehension Test,thus we can understand more comprehensively the correlation between learners' reading ability and their implicit,explicit grammatical knowledge.The present study uses Pearson Correlation Analysis and the Hierarchical Regression Analysis to explore the general situation of the subjects' implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge.Moreover,the author explores the relation between these two types of grammatical knowledge and their reading ability.The major findings are summarized as follows.Firstly,the development of non-English majors' implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge are not synchronized and their explicit grammatical knowledge develops faster than implicit one.Secondly,in the Timed Reading Comprehension Test,the implicit grammatical knowledge of non-English majors is more predictive of their reading ability.However,in the Untimed Reading Comprehension test,L2 learners' explicit grammatical knowledge indicates a high level of prediction in their English reading comprehension.This suggests that teachers should focus on not only the teaching of explicit grammatical knowledge,but also the teaching of implicit grammatical knowledge.Moreover,teachers should promote the conversion from explicit grammatical knowledge to implicit grammatical knowledge,thus enhancing students' reading proficiency.