Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 2016, 38, 265–291.

doi:10.1017/S0272263116000139

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF
GUIDED INDUCTION VERSUS
DEDUCTIVE INSTRUCTION ON
THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPLEX
SPANISH GUSTAR STRUCTURES

An Analysis of Learning Outcomes

and Processes

Luis Cerezo
American University

Allison Caras and Ronald P. Leow

Georgetown University

Meta-analytic research suggests an edge of explicit over implicit

instruction for the development of complex L2 grammatical struc-
tures, but the jury is still out as to which type of explicit instruction—
deductive or inductive, where rules are respectively provided or
elicited—proves more effective. Avoiding this dichotomy, accumulating
research shows superior results for guided induction, in which teachers
help learners co-construct rules by directing their attention to relevant

We would like to thank Georgetown University’s Center for New Designs in Learning
and Scholarship (CNDLS) for awarding the Initiative on Technology-Enhanced Learning
(ITEL) grant to Ronald P. Leow, which permitted him to create The Gustar Maze. We
would also like to thank Bill Garr for developing the software and Janire Zabildea, Jorge
Mendez Seija, and Celia Chomón Zamora for assisting with data collection and coding.
Special thanks to the editors of this volume and the three reviewers for their insightful
feedback and comments.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ronald P. Leow,
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, ICC 411, Georgetown University, 37th and O Streets,
NW, Washington, DC, 20057, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

© Cambridge University Press 2016 265

266 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

aspects in the input and asking guiding questions. However, no study

has jointly investigated the effects of guided induction on both learning
outcomes and processes, or whether guided induction can prove
effective outside classroom settings where teacher mediation is not
possible. In this study, which targeted the complex Spanish gustar
structures, 70 English-speaking learners of beginning Spanish received
either guided induction via a videogame, deductive instruction in
a traditional classroom setting, or no instruction. Learning outcomes
were measured via one receptive and two controlled production
tasks (oral and written) with old and new items. Results revealed that
while both instruction groups improved across time, outperforming
the control group, the guided induction group achieved higher
learning outcomes on all productive posttests (except immediate
oral production) and experienced greater retention. Additionally,
the think-aloud protocols of the guided induction group revealed
high levels of awareness of the L2 structure and a conspicuous
activation of recently learned knowledge, which are posited to have
contributed to this group’s superior performance. These findings thus
illustrate, quantitatively and qualitatively, the potential of guided
induction for the development of complex L2 grammar in online
learning environments.

INTRODUCTION

Recent research meta-analyses concluded that explicit types of instruc-

tion (including metalinguistic rules or directions to infer them) proved
more effective than implicit types (those that do not) for the develop-
ment of L2 grammatical structures (Goo, Granena, Yilmaz, & Novella,
2015), both simple and complex (Spada & Tomita, 2010). However,
these meta-analyses subsumed both deductive instruction (in which
rules are provided) and inductive instruction (in which rules are elicited)
as “explicit instruction” and consequently did not clarify which type of
explicit instruction yields the best results.
From a theoretical perspective, deductive instruction can accelerate
second language (L2) development because it allows learners to identify
the locus and nature of first language (L1)–L2 contrasts (Carroll, 2001),
helping learners to convert declarative into procedural and automatized
knowledge through practice (the “strong interface” position; DeKeyser,
1995). Additionally, knowledge of rules can indirectly promote learning
because it makes learners more prone to notice the L2 form as it appears
in subsequent input (e.g., Ellis, 2002). Many scholars, however, have
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 267

objected that deductive instruction typically emphasizes form over

meaning (Brooks & Donato, 1994), promotes passive participation
(Herron & Tomasello, 1992), may create false illusions of understanding
(Shaffer, 1989), or may only work for learners who can correctly under-
stand the rules, depending on factors such as their knowledge of metalan-
guage (e.g., Elder & Manwaring, 2004).
On the other hand, the problem-solving nature of inductive instruc-
tion is posited to induce greater depth of processing that leads to
more memorable and meaningful experiences for learners (Craik &
Lockhart, 1972; Oded & Walters, 2001). Yet inductive instruction
may be slow, requiring extensive exposure to L2 input (Ellis, 1993);
it may work only for learners that can successfully infer the under-
lying rules (e.g., Erlam, 2005) or whose working memory is not over-
whelmed by new information (Kirschner, Sweller, & Clark, 2006), and
it may even be counterproductive if learners make false assumptions
(Hall, 1998).
From an empirical perspective, results are inconclusive. Some
studies found an edge for deductive instruction (e.g., Erlam, 2003;
Robinson, 1996), others found no differential effects of deductive
and inductive instruction (e.g., Rosa & O’Neill, 1999; Shaffer, 1989),
and others—a minority—found an edge for inductive instruction
(Ayoun, 2001). Arguably, these inconclusive findings may be due to
methodological differences (see Vogel, Herron, Cole, & York, 2011),
including the typically short nature of the treatments and an insuffi-
cient amount of practice, which may have put inductive conditions
at a disadvantage (Cerezo, 2016; Ellis, 1993).
Given the pros and cons of each type of instruction and the incon-
clusive results of the extant research, some have called for a reap-
praisal of language instruction that avoids the dichotomies of purely
deductive versus inductive instruction (e.g., Adair-Hauck, Donato, &
Cumo-Johanssen, 2010; Toth, Wagner, & Moranski, 2013). In that vein, a
few studies have shown superior results for guided induction, in which
teachers help learners coconstruct rules by directing their attention
to relevant aspects in the input, asking guiding questions, or both
(e.g., Haight, Herron, & Cole, 2007; Herron & Tomasello, 1992; Smart, 2014;
Vogel et al., 2011). However, none of these studies have jointly investi-
gated the effects of guided induction on both learning outcomes and
processes, or whether guided induction can prove effective outside
classroom settings in which teacher mediation is not possible. To fill
in this gap, the present study investigated the effectiveness of guided
induction via an educational video game for the development of complex
Spanish gustar structures, as compared to a traditional face-to-face
deductive instruction group and a control group. Additionally, the cog-
nitive processes triggered by guided induction were tapped via think-
aloud protocols.
268 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The Effects of Guided Induction and Deductive Instruction on

Learning Outcomes

Very few published studies have compared the effectiveness of guided

induction and deductive instruction on L2 development (e.g., Haight
et al., 2007; Herron & Tomasello, 1992; Smart, 2014; Vogel et al., 2011).
These studies all operationalized deductive instruction as the presenta-
tion, practice, production (PPP) approach, but they differed in their
operationalizations of guided induction, as explained subsequently.
In Herron and Tomasello’s (1992) seminal study, 26 college students
of beginning French learned 10 grammatical structures over the course of
a semester. Following a counterbalanced design, participants were pre-
sented one structure per week, alternatively switching from a deduction to
a guided induction condition or vice versa. In the guided induction con-
dition, participants chorally completed (a) a contextualized oral drill
and (b) a written fill-in-the-blank activity. The teacher provided right/
wrong feedback or models, without explaining grammar rules or inviting
learners to formulate them. Results from composite scores on a written
fill-in-the-blank task showed an edge for the guided induction condition,
both immediately after the treatment and one week later.
Adair-Hauck and Donato expanded Herron and Tomasello’s guided
induction model into the PACE model (see Adair-Hauck et al., 2010, for
a recent account). Drawing on the Vygotskyan notion of scaffolding, in
the PACE model (a) the teacher presents a written or oral narrative that
embeds the grammatical structure; (b) learners focus their attention on
the structure by, for example, locating and underlining tokens; (c) the
teacher helps learners coconstruct grammar rules by asking guiding
questions; and (d) learners complete an extension activity in which they
need to use the grammatical structure to carry out a task.
Herron and colleagues (Haight et al. 2007; Vogel et al., 2011) con-
ducted two partial replications of Herron and Tomasello (1992), adding
the coconstruction phase of the PACE model at the end of the guided
induction treatments and targeting different structures and participants.
Unlike the PACE model, however, the participants in these studies could
only answer prescripted guiding questions, rather than also asking
their own, and the teacher did not disclose the correct rules. The
results of Haight et al. (2007), which tested 47 college students of ele-
mentary French on eight grammatical structures, showed an edge for
guided induction, both after the treatment on a written fill-in-the-blank
task and 14 weeks later on a written multiple-choice task. Vogel et al.
(2011), testing 40 college students of intermediate French on 10 grammat-
ical structures, partially confirmed these findings. Guided induction
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 269

yielded higher achievement immediately after the treatment, as measured

on a written sentence-reconstruction task in which constituents had been
parenthesized. However, it performed comparably to deductive instruc-
tion at the end of the semester on a written multiple-choice task.
More recently, Smart (2014) implemented a corpus linguistics
approach to guided induction. Forty-nine college students of advanced
English grammar completed two weeks of instruction on the passive
voice under three conditions—data-driven learning through guided
induction, deductive-corpus informed instruction, and traditional grammar
instruction. Based on Flowerdew’s (2009) four Is model, in the guided
induction group (a) learners received preselected concordance lines that
illustrated differences in form, meaning, and use of the grammatical
structure; (b) learners interacted in groups to discuss their observations;
(c) the teacher optionally intervened to provide learners with hints for
induction; and (d) learners completed productive writing activities in
which they applied the rules of their own induction process. Results
from three written assessment tasks (grammaticality judgment with
error correction, active/passive sentence rewriting, and register aware-
ness) showed that only the guided induction group improved signifi-
cantly, both immediately after the treatment and two weeks later, and for
both composite and individual task scores, except register awareness.
Overall, then, existing studies suggest an edge for guided induction
over deductive instruction on L2 development, as measured on a variety
of written assessment tasks, including multiple-choice recognition, fill-in-
the-blank production, sentence reconstruction, and grammaticality judg-
ment with error correction. This edge held both immediately after the
treatment and after a short period of time (1 to 2 weeks); however, find-
ings are contradictory after longer periods (cf. Haight et al., 2007; Vogel
et al., 2011). These results, however, must be taken with caution due to
the paucity of studies, methodological differences and caveats (e.g., the
studies by Herron and colleagues included only two to four test items per
grammatical structure), and different operationalizations of guided induc-
tion. Moreover, no study documented how guided induction propelled
superior learning by analyzing learners’ cognitive processes; thus the
topic warrants further research.

Cognitive Processes in Guided Induction

To investigate how guided induction may promote L2 development,

studies need to triangulate measures of L2 learning outcomes with
learning processes. Focusing on the latter, Toth et al. (2013) analyzed
how learners coconstructed rules for the Spanish pronominal clitic se,
first in groups of two/three students and later with the teacher as a
270 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

class. Cognitive processes were coded under four categories: labeling

(observations about morphosyntactic tokens or phrases, such as naming
a form or its meaning), categorizing (commenting on properties shared
by several tokens), patterning (commenting on links between two
categories of form, such as subject-verb agreement, or between form
and meaning, such as the use of se without an explicit agent), and rule
formulation (extrapolation of patterns to the Spanish language). Results
showed that analytic talk was more prevalent in whole-class discus-
sions with the teacher (57%) than in small-group discussions among
learners (17%), with great variability in both contexts (see Wagner &
Toth’s 2013 follow-up study). Patterning was the predominant cogni-
tive process, taking up around half the time of analytic talk (50% and
44% whole-class and small-group discussions, respectively). The teacher
and learners played different roles during coconstruction. They both spent
a similar amount of time labeling, but the teacher spent more time
categorizing, which seemed to help learners produce higher rates of
patterning and rule formulation.
The studies by Toth and colleagues illustrated the learning processes
during dialogic coconstruction of rules in guided induction, but they did
not establish a link with L2 development. In contrast, other studies (see
Leow, 2012, for a review) have both documented learning processes and
measured learning outcomes in guided induction-like conditions while
learners individually completed “consciousness-raising tasks.”1 Using
concurrent think-aloud protocols, these studies coded learners’ reported
verbalizations of L2 awareness, “a particular state of mind in which an
individual has undergone a specific subjective experience of some cog-
nitive content or external stimulus” (Tomlin & Villa, 1994, p. 193).
Awareness was generally coded at three levels—noticing, reporting,
and understanding—the latter including various processes, such as
hypothesis formulation (formulating hypotheses about the rule under-
lying a target item), rule formulation (providing a full or partial grammat-
ical rule for the target item), and activation of prior knowledge (using
some prior knowledge to encode or decode the target item).
Overall, studies have reported a positive correlation between greater
awareness and, more generally, depth of processing (i.e., the “amount of
cognitive effort . . . employed in decoding and encoding some grammat-
ical or lexical item in the input”; Leow, 2015, p. 204) and amount of L2
development (Leow, 2012). This is consistent with Leow’s (2015) model
of instructed SLA, according to which processing L2 data in greater
depth may result in higher levels of awareness that may facilitate the
incorporation of intake2 into the learner’s developing system.
The present study coded learners’ cognitive processes in terms of
depth of processing and levels of awareness. However, these pro-
cesses can be interconnected with other coding protocols. For example,
hypothesis and rule formulation can be posited to correspond to patterning
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 271

and rule formulation in Toth et al.’s (2013) study. Our discussion section
invokes these interconnections to illustrate the (dis)similarities between
the coconstruction of explicit knowledge in classroom contexts (among
learners, or between learners and the teacher) and online contexts
(between learners and the video game).

The Complexity of Spanish Gustar Structures for English-Speaking

L2 Learners

A multidimensional construct, L2 complexity has been viewed from at

least four perspectives—developmental, psycholinguistic, linguistic,
and pedagogical (see Housen, 2014; Housen & Simoens, 2016). In what
follows, we discuss the complexity of Spanish gustar structures for our
L1 English participants.
From a developmental perspective, Spanish gustar structures are
typically learned relatively late by English speakers, if not in terms of
emergence then at least in terms of accurate mastery (Montrul, 1997).
From a psycholinguistic and linguistic perspective, Spanish gustar
structures pose problems for L1 English speakers trying to process
or produce them, due to, among other factors, the linguistic contrasts
with equivalent “to like” structures.
First, gustar is an intransitive verb that requires a dative experiencer,
whereas “to like” is a transitive agentive verb. In that sense, Spanish gustar
structures behave similarly to English “to please” structures, as illustrated in
(1), (2), and (3). Second, English and Spanish also differ in how word order
determines functional assignment, a contrast that has been posited as a
source of L2 complexity (Collins, Trofimovich, White, & Horst, 2009). English
is a subject-verb-object (SVO) language that relies mainly on word order for
functional assignment, whereas Spanish, given its morphologically richer
nature, has more flexible word order, as shown in (1) versus (3a) or (3b):

(1) English:
I like the house.
I-NOM 1st Sg. like ACC-the house
(2) English:
The house is pleasing to me.
NOM 3rd Sg. please DAT-1st Sg.
(3) a. Spanish (OVS):
(A mí) me gusta la casa.
DAT-To me DAT CL-1st Sg. pleases NOM-the house
b. Spanish (SVO):
La casa me gusta (a mí).
NOM-The house DAT CL-1st Sg. pleases DAT-to me
272 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

When producing a sentence like (1) or interpreting sentences like

(3a) or (3b), English speakers apply the so-called first noun strategy to
map syntactic roles to noun phrases. They assign the subject role to the
first noun (in preverbal position) and the object role to the second
noun (in postverbal position), incorrectly rendering (1) as *(Yo) gusto
las casas, *(Yo) me gusto las casas, or *Yo me gustan las casas, or parsing
(3b) as *“The house likes me.”
Third, the verb gustar needs to agree with the subject (the liked thing)
in number (la casa or las casas), which increases the complexity of the
structure given its low communicative value (DeKeyser, 2005). Fourth,
when the experiencer is a noun (rather than a dropped pronoun), it must
be obligatorily preceded by the case-marking preposition a (“to”) and
accompanied by a redundant indirect object pronoun (e.g., le, “to him”)
as shown in (4a) and (4b). A similar process applies when the experienc-
ers are two nouns, in which case the redundant indirect object pronoun
must be plural (les, “to them”) and the case-marking preposition a (“to”)
must also precede the second noun, as shown in (4c).

(4) a. A John le gusta la casa.

DAT-to John DAT CL-3rd Sg. 3rd Sg. NOM-the house
(“To John, the house pleases to him.”)
b. A John le gustan las casas.
DAT-to John DAT CL-3rd Sg. 3rd Pl. NOM-the houses
(“To John, the houses please to him.”)
c. A John y a Marta les gusta la casa.
DAT-to John DAT CL-3rd Pl. 3rd Sg. NOM-the house
(“To John and to Marta, the house pleases to them.”)

From a L2 processing standpoint, morphological elements such as the

case-marking preposition a and the redundant indirect object pronouns
le and les in (4a–c) are difficult to perceive because both are minimally
salient—they are unstressed, monosyllabic, and likely to appear after
a pause (N. Ellis, 2016). As for production, L2 learners have to master
the functionally complex Spanish clitic system, which marks for case,
number, and gender simultaneously, an example of syntactic allomorphy
that has been posited to increase the cognitive complexity of a structure
(DeKeyser, 2005). Indeed, learners often produce (4b) incorrectly as
*A John les gustan las casas or *A John las gustan las casas (Sanz, 1999).
Finally, from a pedagogical perspective, gustar structures are also
complex. The explanations (or “rules”) typically provided in Spanish L2
textbooks and classroom grammar sessions tend to be elaborate (with
many concepts, steps, or subrules); they include a high amount of meta-
language and terms with a high degree of conceptual abstractness, and
they are small in scope, as they apply to only a group of verbs (Dietz,
2002; Py, 1999).
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 273

As can be seen, Spanish gustar structures pose multiple problems for

L1 English speakers from a developmental, psycholinguistic, linguistic,
and pedagogical perspective, all of which add to their overall learning
difficulty (Housen & Simoens, 2016). Furthermore, we posit here that
not all Spanish gustar structures are equally complex and that they can
be divided into at least four types depending on the number of steps
that L1 English speakers need to take to process or produce them:

• Type 1 (at least three steps): Gustar structures in which the experiencer is a first-
person pronoun (singular me or plural nos) or second-person singular pronoun
(te). Learners need to (a) process the thing liked as the subject (e.g., las casas,
“the houses”), (b) make the experiencer the indirect object (e.g., me “to me”),
and (c) conjugate the verb in agreement with the thing(s) liked (e.g., plural gustan
“please”). Optionally, they may also have to (d) insert or decode a pleonastic
dative pronoun preceded by a redundant preposition (e.g., a mí, “to me”).
• Type 2 (at least four steps): Gustar structures in which the experiencer is a third-
person pronoun (él, ella, ellos, or ellas). In addition to the first three processes
(a–c) in Type 1 and optionally (d), learners must (e) process or produce the dative
pronouns le and les, which are typically confused with the direct object pronouns
lo, la, los, or las or the reflexive se, due to their similarity and low saliency.
• Type 3 (five steps): Gustar structures in which the experiencer is one noun.
In addition to the first three (a–c) and fifth (e) processes in Type 2, learners
have to obligatorily perform (d).
• Type 4 (six steps): Gustar structures in which the experiencers are two
or more nouns. In addition to the five processes in Type 3, learners must
repeat (d) for the second noun.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

In light of the previous review, the present study asked the following
research questions:

1. Does the type of instruction (guided induction vs. deductive instruction vs.
control) have differential effects on the development of a structurally and
cognitively complex L2 structure (Spanish gustar structures)? If so, do these
effects hold after 2 weeks?
2. What cognitive processes are employed while processing a complex L2 form
during guided induction in an online environment?

METHOD

Participants

Participants were 70 (initially 129) college-level students (38 female

and 32 male) of beginning Spanish who met the following three
274 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

criteria: (a) they scored zero on the production pretests; (b) they reported
no exposure to the targeted structure during the study; and (c) they
completed all experimental sessions. Before taking part in the study,
participants had received 10 weeks (approximately 25 hr) of formal expo-
sure to Spanish under a communicative approach. The course textbook
used was Vistazos, third edition (McGraw-Hill).

Treatment

Educational Video Game. Developed in JavaScript, The Gustar Maze

used guided induction to gradually promote deeper processing of
the target structures. Based on Leow’s (2015) model of instructed
SLA, The Gustar Maze sought to reap the reported benefits of task-
essentialness (to focus learners’ attention on the target form; Loschky &
Bley-Vroman, 1993), scaffolding (to gradually introduce the complexity
of the form; Ludwig-Hardman & Dunlap, 2003), right/wrong feedback
(to trigger hypothesis and rule formulation; Cerezo, 2016; Rosa &
Leow, 2004), and guiding questions (to help learners infer rules; Vogel
et al., 2011). The Gustar Maze was initially pilot-tested among 14 par-
ticipants, who reacted very positively overall and helped identify
some issues (e.g., user-friendliness and glitches) that were subsequently
fixed.
On starting the game, participants were greeted by a pop-up bubble
asking, “¿Cómo se dice en español [How do you say in Spanish] I like the
house?” The screen then displayed two options, yo (I) and a mí (to me).
Participants selected one, received corrective feedback, and were pre-
sented with the next two options to complete the sentence. The treat-
ment consisted of 20 items like this, sequentially presented according
to the four types of gustar structures discussed earlier, across four
video game levels (see Table 1).
If the learners’ choice was right, they accumulated money and moved
on to select new sentence constituents. If their choice was wrong, they

Table 1. Treatment items in The Gustar Maze

Video game level Structure type Type of experiencer Number of items

1 1 1st sg. pronoun (me, “I”) (6)

2 2nd sg. pronoun (te, “you”) (2)
1st pl. pronoun (nos, “we”) (2)
3 2 3rd person pronoun (le, “s/he”) (4)
4 3 One noun (3)
4 Two nouns (3)
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 275

lost money and returned to a previous video game level. In addition to

“right/wrong feedback” (Cerezo, 2016), guiding questions—such as,
“Oops, seems like yo doesn’t work with gustar”; “Wow, did this sen-
tence follow the previous pattern?”; and “Did you see what took place
between A mí me gusta la casa [I like the house] and A mí me gustan las
casas [I like the houses]?”—were provided. Figure 1 provides a video
game screenshot.
After successfully completing a video game level, the screen dis-
played a list of correct and incorrect rules for the gustar item types
covered so far. Participants were asked to select those that they
thought were correct and were transported to the next level regard-
less of their accuracy. Once they completed all 20 treatment items,
participants exited the maze and were welcomed by a series of fire-
works. Total dollars won and time spent appeared in a corner of the
computer screen.

Instructional Conditions. Intact classes were randomly assigned to

one of two experimental groups varying in the type of instruction—
guided induction (GI, n = 24) and deductive instruction (DI, n = 26)—
or to an uninstructed control group (control, n = 20). In the DI group
the teacher covered all 20 exemplars of gustar described in the Edu-
cational Video Game section, in the same order. He first asked partic-
ipants (in Spanish), “How do you say in Spanish ‘I like the house’?”
and invited participants to provide an answer. He then wrote on the
blackboard (A mí) me gusta la casa; translated the sentence literally
(“to me [emphatic] to me pleases the house”); explained that it was
not the English subject “I” that was the subject of the verb gustar but,
rather, the thing liked (“the house”); and asked participants to pay
close attention to the verb agreement. As he introduced the other

Figure 1. A screen shot of one treatment item in the video game.

276 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

exemplars of gustar in the same fashion, he highlighted orally and

visually on the blackboard the differences between the English and
Spanish equivalents and the potential processing problems of this
verb evidenced by English-speaking learners of Spanish. Questions
were encouraged and responded to and corrective feedback was
provided when necessary. In turn, the GI group played The Gustar
Maze video game, whereas the control group simply performed
the assessment tasks without any formal exposure to the targeted
structure.3

Assessment Tasks

Assessment tasks included two productive tasks (controlled oral and

written production), which measured participants’ ability to produce
orally and in writing the targeted gustar structure, and one receptive
task (multiple-choice written recognition). These tasks likely measured
explicit knowledge, given their controlled nature (Spada & Tomita,
2010) and our pedagogical treatments, which were designed to promote
explicit learning (Leow, 2015). All pretests had six old items (identical
to the ones presented in the treatment). Additionally, the immediate
and delayed posttests had six new items, which included different expe-
riencers and “liked things.” The instruction for the controlled oral pro-
duction task read as follows:

In each of the items below, people are expressing their liking of some-
thing. Using the words below in each item, how would you say each item
orally in full sentences? Speak loudly and clearly into the microphone.
Example: (1) Tú/gustar/las casas.

The instruction for the controlled written production task read:

Write the Spanish equivalents of the following sentences in English.

Use the verb gustar. Example: “John and Mary like Chinese food.”

The instruction for the multiple-choice recognition task read:

This is a speed test! Select the letter that best describes each sentence as
quickly as you can. Make sure you read through all the options and do
your best at selecting the right answer quickly! PLEASE DO NOT RETURN
TO A PREVIOUS ITEM, THAT IS, JUST DO THE ITEMS QUICKLY ONE AT A
TIME WITHOUT CHECKING PREVIOUS ONES AS THIS WILL AFFECT YOUR
SPEED. GO! Example: “She likes the houses” (a. A ella gustan las casas;
b. Ella gusta las casas; c. A ella le gustan las casas; d. Ella le gusta las casas;
e. None of the above).
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 277

Procedure

Participants reported to the language laboratory and read and signed the
institutional review board form, which informed them that they would
be assigned to either a classroom or the language laboratory to receive
online or offline exposure to certain Spanish grammatical items. They
then completed the pretest. As explained previously, intact classes were
assigned to the three instructional conditions. To address the second
research question and control for reactivity (i.e., whether thinking aloud
impacted subsequent performance), about half of the participants in the
GI group were also requested to think aloud while playing The Gustar
Maze, after a training session with a mathematical problem (see online
Appendix A). The sessions for the DI and GI groups lasted about 20 and
15 min, respectively. Directly after, participants performed an unan-
nounced immediate posttest. The control group simply performed the
immediate posttest near the end of the session, which involved activities
without gustar. An unannounced delayed posttest was administered
2 weeks later, together with a debriefing questionnaire to address poten-
tial data contamination during the entire experimental period. For all
assessment stages, the order of tests was as follows: (a) controlled oral
production, (b) controlled written production, and (c) multiple-choice
written recognition. To minimize formal exposure to the target form, all
references to gustar were removed from the syllabus and homework
assignments, and instructors were requested not to entertain questions
on it during the experimental period.

Scoring

All items on the assessment tasks were conservatively scored one

point or zero points based on whether or not they were fully accurate
and were coded as old (included in the treatment) or new items. The
maximum scores were 6 on the pretests and 12 on the immediate and
delayed posttests. The analysis of the think-aloud protocols is pre-
sented in the next section.

Analysis

Reliability coefficients on the immediate posttests, computed using

Cronbach’s alpha, were high (0.97, 0.97, and 0.92 for controlled oral
production, controlled written production, and multiple-choice written
recognition, respectively), proving the validity of the assessment tests.
278 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

Separate t tests on the scores from the immediate posttests revealed no

significant difference between the think-aloud and non-think-aloud
GI groups on either controlled oral production, t(22) = .74, p = .468,
controlled written production, t(22) = .39, p = .701, or multiple-choice
written recognition, t(22) = .51, p = .618, indicating no reactivity
effects.
To answer the first research question, which asked whether the type
of instruction had differential effects on the development of Spanish
gustar, separate repeated-measures ANOVAs were performed per type
of item (old, new, and all items), entering type of instruction and time as
the between- and within-subject factors, respectively. Because the pre-
tests included old items only, achievement data were analyzed in a two-
step process: a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest analysis of old items
and a posttest–delayed posttest analysis of new and all items. Effect
sizes (partial eta-squared, ηp2) and observed power (OP) were calcu-
lated. Effect sizes around .01, .06, and .14 were considered small, medium,
and large, respectively. An observed power of .8 was considered accept-
able. The alpha level for all analyses of significance was set at .05.
To answer the second research question, which addressed the cogni-
tive processes employed by the GI group, two coders transcribed the
participants’ think-aloud protocols, highlighting instances of hypo-
thesis formulation, rule formulation, and activation of prior knowledge,
as defined previously, together with instances of metacognition, defined
as any comment describing the participants’ feelings about their pro-
gress. Interrater reliability was 94.5%, and for the remaining 5.5% an
agreement was reached. For each verbal protocol, the total number of
words, the number of words used to verbalize cognitive processes, and
the number of instances of each type of cognitive process at each of the
four levels of the video game were tallied. Online Appendix A contains a
participant’s full protocol. The following list provides examples of cog-
nitive processes from several participants:

• Hypothesis formulation: “A mí. A mí me. A mí and me mean the same thing.

Yes they both mean I” (Diana).
• Rule formulation: “Because gustar agrees to the thing being liked” (Tom).
• Activation of recent prior knowledge: “A ella I feel like we already did this
one” (Sally).
• Metacognition: “I’m getting the hang of it” (Alex).

RESULTS

Table 2 provides descriptive statistics of accuracy scores by type of

assessment task, testing stage, item, and instruction. Although sepa-
rate statistical analyses were performed for old, new, and all items,
for brevity’s sake the following sections report only the differences
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 279

Table 2. Descriptive statistics: All groups, tests, and items

Pretest mean (SD) Posttest mean (SD) Delayed mean (SD)

Source Old New All Old New All Old New All

Controlled Oral Production

GI (n = 24) 0.00 – – 4.88 5.04 10.00 4.38 4.29 8.71
(0.00) (1.57) (1.65) (3.04) (2.24) (2.16) (4.29)
DI (n = 26) 0.00 – – 3.73 3.85 7.58 2.15 2.42 4.58
(0.00) (2.52) (2.51) (5.01) (2.48) (2.61) (5.05)
Control 0.00 – – 0.10 0.15 0.25 0.85 0.70 1.55
(n = 20) (0.00) (0.30) (0.37) (0.55) (1.09) (0.87) (1.47)
Controlled Written Production
GI (n = 24) 0.00 – – 5.42 5.54 10.96 4.96 4.83 9.79
(0.00) (0.93) (0.78) (1.54) (1.80) (1.68) (3.43)
DI (n = 26) 0.00 – – 3.62 3.62 7.23 2.42 2.35 4.77
(0.00) (2.17) (2.47) (4.52) (1.94) (2.04) (3.94)
Control 0.00 – – 0.05 0.05 0.10 0.50 0.55 1.10
(n = 20) (0.00) (0.22) (0.22) (0.31) (0.51) (0.76) (1.16)
Written Recognition
GI (n = 24) 1.75 – – 5.38 5.46 10.83 5.04 4.96 10.00
(1.07) (0.88) (0.83) (1.55) (1.46) (1.52) (2.93)
DI (n = 26) 1.50 – – 5.19 4.92 10.12 4.73 5.00 9.73
(1.36) (1.33) (1.79) (2.80) (2.13) (2.19) (4.21)
Control 1.65 – – 1.55 1.35 2.90 2.70 2.80 5.55
(n = 20) (1.35) (0.94) (0.58) (1.25) (1.49) (1.61) (3.00)

between them. A full report of statistical analyses is included in online

Appendices B–D.

Controlled Oral Production

The ANOVA performed on the controlled oral production scores

(old items) yielded a significant main effect for time, F(2, 134) = 89.76,
p = .000, ηp2 = .57, OP = 1.00, a significant main effect for type of instruc-
tion, F(2, 67) = 32.81, p = .000, ηp2 = .49, OP = 1.00, and a significant inter-
action between time and type of instruction, F(4, 134) = 20.75, p = .000,
ηp2 = .38, OP = 1.00. These results are best interpreted in conjunction
with their visual representation in Figure 2.
The significant main effect for time indicated that, overall, partici-
pants experienced learning of the target form. Separate within-subject
ANOVAs revealed that both experimental groups, GI and DI, experi-
enced statistically significant learning from pretest to immediate posttest.
280 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

Figure 2. Controlled oral production accuracy by group (old items only).

The GI group increased 4.87 items, F(1, 23) = 231.67, p = .000, ηp2 = .91,
OP = 1.00, and the DI group increased 3.73 items, F(1, 25) = 56.86, p = .000,
ηp2 = .69, OP = 1.00. However, whereas the GI group retained learning
from the immediate to the delayed posttest, with a nonsignificant
loss of .50 items, F(1, 23) = 1.38, p = .252, ηp2 = .06, OP = .20, the DI
group experienced a statistically significant decrease of 1.58 items,
F(1, 25) = 12.40, p = .002, ηp2 = .33, OP = .92. In turn, the control group
did not improve significantly from the pretest to the immediate post-
test, F(1, 19) = 2.11, p = .163, ηp2 = .10, OP = .28, but it did experience
statistically significant learning of .75 items from the immediate to
the delayed posttest, F(1, 19) = 12.04, p = .003, ηp2 = .34, OP = .91.
The significant interaction between time and type of instruction indi-
cated that the groups’ learning trajectories were statistically different.
A post hoc Scheffé test indicated that at the immediate posttest both
experimental groups outperformed the control group (GI: M = 4.78, SE = .55,
p = .000; and DI: M = 3.63, SE = .54, p = .000). The GI group was the top
scorer, but it did not significantly outperform the DI group (M = 1.14,
SE = .51, p = .088). At the delayed posttest, however, only the GI group
outperformed the control group (GI: M = 3.53, SE = .63, p = .000; and DI:
M = 1.30, SE = .62, p = .118). Additionally, the GI group outperformed the
DI group (M = 2.22, SE = .59, p = .002).
The preceding statistical procedure was repeated for new and
all items (Figure 3) at the immediate to delayed posttest interval,
yielding the same statistically significant differences, with a couple
of exceptions (see online Appendix B). First, the DI group did outper-
form the control group on delayed oral production of both new items
(M = 1.72, SE = .62, p = .026) and all items (M = 3.03, SE = 1.21, p = .049).
And second, the GI group’s edge over the DI group approached
significance on the immediate oral production of all items (M = 2.42,
SE = 1.01, p = .062).
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 281

Figure 3. Controlled oral production accuracy by group (all items).

Controlled Written Production

Similarly to oral production, the ANOVA on the controlled written

production scores (old items) yielded a significant main effect for
time, F(2, 134) = 142.36, p = .000, ηp2 = .68, OP = 1.00, a significant main
effect for type of instruction, F(2, 67) = 85.74, p = .000, ηp2 = .72, OP = 1.00,
and a significant interaction between time and type of instruction,
F(4, 134) = 36.30, p = .000, ηp2 = .52, OP = 1.00. Figure 4 provides a visual
representation.
Separate within-subject ANOVAs revealed that both experimental
groups improved significantly from the pretest to the immediate
posttest. The GI group increased 5.42 items, F(1, 23) = 816.59, p = .000,
ηp2 = .97, OP = 1.00, and the DI group increased 3.61 items, F(1, 25) = 71.91,

Figure 4. Controlled written production accuracy by group (old items

only).
282 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

p = .000, ηp2 = .74, OP = 1.00. However, whereas the GI group retained

learning from the immediate to the delayed posttest, with a nonsig-
nificant loss of .46 items, F(1, 23) = 1.04, p = .319, ηp2 = .04, OP = .16,
the DI group experienced a statistically significant decrease of 1.19
items, F(1, 25) = 9.62, p = .005, ηp2 = .28. OP = .85. The control group
did not improve significantly from the pretest to the immediate post-
test, F(1, 19) = 1.00, p = .330, ηp2 = .05, OP = .16, but it did experience
a statistically significant increase of .45 items from the immediate to
the delayed posttest, F(1, 19) = 11.07, p = .004, ηp2 = .37, OP = .88.
Post hoc Scheffé tests showed that the experimental groups out-
performed the control group, both immediately after the treatment
(GI: M = 5.37, SE = .44, p = .000; and DI: M = 3.57, SE =.43, p = .000) and
two weeks later (GI: M = 4.46, SE = .49, p = .000; and DI: M = 1.92, SE = .48,
p = .001). Additionally, the GI group outperformed the DI group at
both the immediate posttest (GI: M = 1.80, SE = .41, p = .000) and the
delayed posttest (GI: M = 2.54, SE = .46, p = .000).
Replication of the preceding statistical procedure for new and all items
(Figure 5) at the immediate to delayed posttest interval yielded exactly
the same statistically significant differences (see online Appendix C).

Multiple-Choice Written Recognition

The ANOVA on the multiple-choice written recognition scores (old items)

yielded a significant main effect for time, F(2, 134) = 125.39, p = .000,
ηp2 = .65, OP = 1.00, a significant main effect for type of instruction,
F(2, 67) = 23.25, p = .000, ηp2 = .41, OP = 1.00, and a significant interaction
between time and type of instruction, F(4, 134) = 22.82, p = .000, ηp2 = .40,
OP = 1.00. Figure 6 provides a visual representation.

Figure 5. Controlled written production accuracy by group (all items).

Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 283

Figure 6. Multiple-choice written recognition accuracy by group (old

items only).

Separate within-subject ANOVAs revealed that both experimental

groups improved significantly from pretest to immediate posttest.
The GI group increased 3.62 items, F(1, 23) = 166.27, p = .000, ηp2 = .88,
OP = 1.00, and the DI group gained 3.69 items, F(1, 25) = 139.47, p = .000,
ηp2 = .85, OP = 1.00. Both the GI and DI groups retained learning from
the immediate to the delayed posttest, F(1, 23) = .94, p = .343, ηp2 = .04,
OP = .15, and F(1, 25) = 1.43, p = .242, ηp2 = .05, OP = .21, respectively. The
control group did not improve significantly from pretest to posttest,
F(1, 19) = .24, p = .629, ηp2 = .01, OP = .07, but did gain 1.15 items from the
immediate to the delayed posttest, which was statistically significant,
F(1, 19) = 22.29, p = .000, ηp2 = .54, OP = .99.
Post hoc Scheffé tests showed that the experimental groups out-
performed the control group, both immediately after the treatment
(GI: M = 3.83, SE = .33, p = .000; and DI: M = 3.64, SE =.32, p = .000) and
two weeks later (GI: M = 2.34, SE = .53, p = .000; and DI: M = 2.03, SE = .52,
p = .001). However, both experimental groups performed compara-
bly on both posttests, immediately after the treatment (M =.18, SE = .31,
p = .83) and two weeks later (M = .31, SE = .49, p = .82).
Replication of the preceding statistical procedures for new and all
items (see Figure 7) at the immediate-delayed posttest interval yielded
the same statistically significant differences (see online Appendix D).

Cognitive Processes during the GI Treatment

Participants verbalized, on average, 1,245.8 words (min. = 240;

max. = 2733; SD = 734.42). Of those, they used 222 words to verbalize
the cognitive processes in our coding protocol, which conservatively
284 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

Figure 7. Multiple-choice written recognition accuracy by group (all

items).

excluded potential instances of noticing and reporting while participants

read aloud the practice items and feedback (min. = 0; max. = 457;
SD = 174). This represented 15.49% of total talk time (min. = 0%;
max. = 29.3%; SD = 10.91%; see Figure 8 for individual participant
percentages). On average, participants verbalized the cognitive pro-
cesses in our protocol 20.8 times during the treatment (min. = 0;
max. = 44; SD = 15.39; see Figure 9 for individual participant counts).
Only 2 participants out of 10 did not report any of the cognitive pro-
cesses in our protocol.4 The remaining 8 were able to reach the high-
est level of awareness (rule formulation) 17.75 times on average
(min. = 6; max. = 34; SD = 10.4). As Figure 10 shows, for all 10 partici-
pants the most frequently verbalized cognitive process was rule for-
mulation, with 14.2 average counts (68.27%), followed by metacognition

Figure 8. Percentage of words used to verbalize cognitive processes

by participant.
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 285

Figure 9. Number of verbalized cognitive processes by participant.

(2.6 counts, 12.5%), activation of recent prior knowledge (2.2 counts,

10.58%), and hypothesis formulation (1.8 counts, 8.65%). This breakup
of cognitive processes was homogenous across all four levels of the
video game, although instances of metacognition seemed to diminish
gradually.

DISCUSSION

The first research question asked whether type of instruction (guided

induction vs. deductive instruction vs. control group) would have dif-
ferential effects on the development of complex Spanish gustar struc-
tures. The answer to this question is affirmative for our productive
assessment tasks (controlled oral and written production) and negative
for our receptive task (multiple-choice written recognition). As noted

Figure 10. Number of verbalized cognitive processes by level of the

video game.
286 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

earlier, our tasks likely measured our participants’ explicit knowledge

of the targeted structure, given their controlled nature and the explicit
orientation of our treatments.
Experimental groups GI and DI both outperformed the control group
on all posttests (save the DI group on delayed oral production of old
items). Additionally, GI outperformed DI on all controlled production
posttests (save immediate oral production, in which it approached
statistical significance for all items). This edge increased over time. For
written production, GI’s edge over DI went from 3.73 items (31% of 12)
on the immediate posttest to 5.02 items (42%) 2 weeks later. For oral
production, it went from 2.42 items (20%) to 4.13 items (34%). This was
because whereas GI retained learning, DI experienced significant decreases
in retention (3 items, 25%, on oral production, and 2.46 items, 20%, on
written production). A closer look at the written and oral posttests
revealed that those decreases were localized in two sources: largely
Type 4 items (the double noun structure, particularly the insertion of
the a dative marker before the second noun) and to a lesser extent the
two nos items at Type 1. These findings are remarkable, given that both
experimental groups practiced with the same 20 treatment items and DI
actually spent 5 min more on the items than the average GI participant.
As discussed subsequently, GI may have promoted deeper cognitive
processing than DI, helping learners internalize a greater portion of
intake in their developing systems (Leow, 2015), particularly for the
more difficult types of structures.
Our results are much in line with previous studies, in which guided
induction (more than deductive instruction) helped learners develop
various linguistic structures in classroom contexts, both immediately
and up to 2 weeks later (e.g., Haight et al., 2007; Herron & Tomasello,
1992; Smart, 2014; Vogel et al., 2011). However, our study further illus-
trates that guided induction can prove effective in fully online learning,
in which teacher mediation is not possible.
Our experimental groups, however, performed comparably on all
multiple-choice recognition posttests. This is consistent with Flynn’s
(1986) point that receptive tasks are less challenging than productive
tasks. In other words, the depth of processing elicited by DI may have
been enough to parallel GI in accurately recognizing gustar structures.
This is further illustrated by the larger delayed gains of our control group
for multiple-choice recognition (compared to the production tests), as
explained subsequently.
The control group improved statistically—though minimally—from
the immediate to the delayed posttests (1.3 items on oral produc-
tion, 1 on written production, and 2.6 items on written recognition).
A post hoc analysis revealed that these gains were experienced in the
Type 1 structures of gustar (specifically with pronouns me and te),
but not in the types posited to be more advanced. Possible causes
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 287

include potential (but not statistically significant) test effects after

the immediate posttests and some potential exposure to the target
structure in the participants’ textbook and workbook despite their
reports to the contrary.
With the mentioned exceptions, our results were consistent for old,
new, and all items. One possible interpretation of these results is that
our item types were not fundamentally different. In other words, intro-
ducing new experiencers and liked objects in gustar structures did not
pose an added difficulty to our participants, who were able to gener-
alize their recently gained explicit knowledge to the new items.5
In sum, our results for the first research question show that guided
induction can successfully promote explicit learning of a structurally
and cognitively complex grammatical structure in a fully online environ-
ment. Furthermore, they indicate that guided induction may have an
edge over deductive instruction in more cognitively taxing assessment
tasks (production over recognition) and for more complex structures or
substructures, as evidenced by the GI group’s retention versus the DI
group’s decrease of Type 4 gustar substructures in production tasks.
The second research question asked which cognitive processes
were employed during the learning of complex Spanish gustar struc-
tures by the GI group. An analysis of this group’s think-aloud proto-
cols revealed that participants verbalized awareness at the level of
understanding (hypothesis and rule formulation), activation of recent
prior knowledge, and metacognition during 15.49% of their talk time.
Although this may seem a small percentage, it should be noted that we
did not code as cognitive processes the participants’ read-alouds of the
video game script and feedback, which may well overlap with instances
of noticing and reporting of the target structure. In fact, 8 out of 10
participants reported verbalizations of the correct rules, on average
17.75 times and ranging from 6 to 34 times. As is discussed subse-
quently, rule formulation was indeed the most frequently verbalized
cognitive process, on average 14.2 times (68.27%), followed by meta-
cognition (12.5%), activation of recent prior knowledge (10.58%), and
hypothesis formulation (8.65%).
The high percentage of rule formulation (68.27%) contrasts sharply
with that in Toth et al.’s (2013) study, in which the participants only
formulated the rules during 20% and 14% of their talk time in small-
group and whole-class interaction, respectively. Those participants
spent most of their time patterning (44.4% and 49.9% in small-group and
whole-class interaction, respectively), as opposed to the participants in
our study, who showed hypothesis formulation only 8.65% of the time.
One likely cause of this divergence is the different type of task in both
studies. Much less controlled, the task in Toth et al. (2013) involved
reading texts to find and compare instances of the targeted structure
(Spanish se structures) and counterexamples (personal sentences).
288 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

In contrast, the item-by-item translation nature of our task and the recur-
rent feedback with guiding questions helped our participants quickly
notice the gap in their interlanguage, allowing them to start formulating
rules earlier. Additionally, our video game promoted a more individual-
ized learning experience, with feedback and guiding questions that were
in line with each learner’s needs.
Online Appendix A, which includes a coded full verbal protocol
(reported in Leow, 2015), provides an insightful account of the cogni-
tive processes employed by one participant in our GI group, Mark. As
can be observed in the protocol, Mark’s initial production attempts
demonstrated the difficulty of our target structure. His initial inaccurate
responses were clearly driven by L1 processing. However, with the help
of guiding questions, he soon began to process the L2 data deeper by
noticing mismatches, making hypotheses, showing evidence of rule for-
mulation, activating recently learned knowledge of exemplars, and
displaying metacognition. Mark’s deeper processing led him to reach
awareness at the level of understanding of several target rules, overriding
his initial hypotheses and readjusting his subsequent productions. This
protocol thus appears to provide empirical support for Leow’s (2015)
model at the intake processing stage. At the same time, it illustrates that
guided induction that is theoretically driven can be successfully used to
promote deeper processing and potential development of structurally and
cognitively complex linguistic structures in an online learning platform.

CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS, AND FURTHER RESEARCH

Our study showed that whereas both traditional deductive instruction

in a classroom setting and guided induction via a video game effec-
tively promoted the development of explicit knowledge of the complex
gustar structures, the latter had an edge, particularly on productive
assessment measures that were more cognitively taxing and for the
more difficult aspects of the target structure. This was likely due to the
specific nature of our guided induction task, which promoted deeper
cognitive processing, and to the individualized learning that our video
game was able to promote.
This study, however, is not without limitations. First, as pointed ear-
lier, our experimental groups were guided by ecological considerations.
As a result, we did not explicitly control for learner attention during the
DI treatment and conflated type of instruction with instructional set-
ting. Baralt’s (2013) research suggests that the effects of a pedagogical
intervention (e.g., task complexity) may be moderated by the instruc-
tional setting, with more complex and cognitively demanding tasks
working better face-to-face than online. Thus, future studies may want
to control for learner attention in DI treatments and compare our two
Guided Induction vs. Deductive Instruction 289

types of instruction under the same setting, or address the interaction

between type of instruction (DI vs. GI) and type of setting (face-to-face vs.
online). Second, we only controlled for learners’ prior knowledge of the
target structure. Future studies must therefore control for cognitive and
psychosocial individual differences. Third, although the same 20 treatment
items were practiced in both experimental conditions and the GI group
took five fewer minutes to complete the treatment, the potential backtrack-
ing nature of the video game did allow a (minimal) number of participants
to practice again with previously encountered items. Future studies should
investigate the moderating role of amount of practice, in line with Cerezo
(2016). Fourth, given the relatively similar level of processing reported by
our participants, we did not address whether there was a correlation
between depth of processing and learning outcomes. Future studies on
larger populations of learners should be best suited to do so. Lastly, we
only targeted one grammatical structure with four posited levels of com-
plexity. Future studies may want to target various grammatical structures
or various types of L2 features (e.g., lexical, morphological, or syntactic)
in the same design, to investigate more clearly how the type of instruc-
tion may be moderated by the type or complexity of L2 features.

SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

To view supplementary material for this article, please visit http://dx.

doi.org/10.1017/S0272263116000139

Received 1 April 2015

Accepted 4 February 2016
Final Version Received 10 February 2016

NOTES

1. According to Toth et al. (2013, p. 4) “such tasks constitute guided induction, as

they engage learner agency in analysing L2 grammar while providing support through
task materials and teacher feedback.”
2. “Intake . . . is that part of the input that has been attended to by second language
learners while processing the input. Intake represents stored linguistic data that may be
used for immediate recognition and does not necessarily imply language acquisition”
(Leow, 1993, p. 334).
3. In comparing these experimental groups, we were driven by ecological consider-
ations (the prevalent type of classroom-based instruction and the affordances of video
games). However, as pointed out by one reviewer, by conflating type of instruction (deduc-
tive instruction or guided induction) with instructional setting (face-to-face or online
learning), we introduced learners’ attention as a potential confound. Nonetheless, it is
noteworthy that both the DI and GI groups performed not only statistically similarly on
the recognition assessment task but also at more than 90% accuracy, which suggests that
the DI group was indeed paying high rates of attention. The differential performances on
the production tests could be attributed to how participants processed the target data.
290 Luis Cerezo, Allison Caras, and Ronald P. Leow

4. Nevertheless, both participants spent the average amount of time on task and, like
the non-think-aloud group, also performed very well on all the immediate and delayed
posttests.
5. One reviewer suggested that new items should have been verbs similar to gustar,
such as interesar, encantar, and so on. This point is well taken, though at the same time we
did not want to introduce into the study additional information that would link gustar to
other verbs.

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