In the name of god

 The majority of explicit instruction studies in SLA

have investigated the effects of a combination of
explicit explanation and various types of practice
activities but predominantly those of the free kind.
We will consider a representative sample of these
studies and then review a rather different study that
Explicit investigated ‘concept-based instruction.
explanation with  Two studies that investigated the effects of
practice ‘functional-analytic teaching’ are worth considering
in some detail,because they constitute excellent
examples of how to implement this kind of teaching.
Harley (1989) devised a set of functional-grammar
materials to teach French immersion students the
distinction between passe and imparfait.
 The learners demonstrated significant improvement in the accurate use of the two
verb tenses in a written composition,in a rational cloze test and in an oral interview.
However,a control group subsequently caught up with the experimental group. Harley
suggested that this group might also have subsequently received explicit instruction
directed at the target features.

 The functional grammar-teaching materials in Day and Shapson’s(1991) study

involved students planning an imaginary space colony.the instruction was
extensive,covering three weekly 40-60 minute lessons over a six-week period.it
included an introductory session where the various uses of conditional verb forms
were summarized(i.e. there was some direct consciousness-raising) followed by
practice in the use of the conditional in hypothetical situations and in polite requests.
 Both these studies were designed to overcome a
limitation of immersion programmes(i.e. immersion
learners’ failure to achieve high levels of
grammatical accuracy).
 White et al.(1991) studied the effects of instruction
on question formation (WH-and ‘yes/no’).
 Five hours of instruction over a two week period
was provided.the first week consisted of explicit
instruction on question formation. In the second
week,learners engaged in various free production
activities.the teachers were also encouraged to
provide corrective feedback.Acquisition was
measured by means of a cartoon task,a preference
grammaticality judgement task and an oral
communication task
 In comparison to a control group,the experimental
group showed substantial gains in accuracy on all
the measures.
 As we saw earlier,concept-based instruction
involves providing learners with a ‘scientific
description’ of a target structure which they then
verbalize in a practice activity.
 What is CR?
 As stated in P.90, Inductive presentation can also
take the form of ‘consciousness- raising tasks’
that students complete individually or in small
group work.
Issues in explicit  As Willis and Willis (1996) noted, CR activities
grammar have been a part of language teaching for a long
instruction time.however,they appear to be becoming
increasingly popular in ELT course books. Nitta and
research Gardner (2005),for example,reported that seven
out of nine intermediate-level course books they
examined employed grammar consciousness-
raising tasks as the initial step in a presentation-
practice approach.
  CR tasks only aim to promote learner’s explicit
knowledge. the studies that have investigated CR
tasks have typically used grammaticality
judgement tests to measure learning,on the
grounds that these are likely to tap learners’
explicit knowledge.
The  the other forms of explicit
measurement instruction,however,have implicit knowledge (i.e.

of aquisition the ability to deploy grammatical forms accurately

in communicative language use) as their goal.
 A crucial issue,then, is whether explicit instruction
with or without practice does result in implicit
knowledge.to assess this we need to examine the
way that acquisition was measured in these
studies.
 Norris and Ortega (2000) distinguished four kinds of
measures of acquisition:
1) Metalinguistics judgements (e.g. grammaticality
judgement tests)
The 2) Selected responses (e.g. multiple choice
measurement questions)

of aquisition 3) Constrained constructed responses (e.g. fill-in-

the-gap items)
4) Free constructed responses (e.g. tasks eliciting
spontaneous oral production
  They report the effects of instruction for each of
these measures.the effect size for free constructed
responses(d=0.55),which Norris and Ortega
considered the best measure of implicit
knowledge,was much lower than effect sizes for
The the other three measures.

measurement  In other words,explicit instruction has much less

effect on learners’ ability to use the target
of aquisition structures accurately in spontaneous oral
production,the best measure of implicit knowledge
 A reasonable conclusion is that explicit instruction
has a strong effect on explicit knowledge but also
contributes to implicit knowledge.
  The acquisition of implicit knowledge of a
grammatical structure is a gradual,dynamic
process involving transitional stages.
 It follows that if explicit instruction is to have an
effect,it must do so by assisting learners to
The effect of progress along an acquisition sequence.

explicit instruction  Two studies have shown that there are

on the sequence developmental constraints on whether explicit

instruction is effective but also that it can help
of acquisition learners move on to a new stage if they are
developmentally ready to do so.
 Perhaps,though,the problem of developmental
readiness only arises if the instruction is directed
at an entirely ‘new’ structure.
  If explicit instruction is to be truly useful, its effect
must be durable.
 This is why many of the explicit instruction studies
included delayed as well as immediate post-tests.

The durability  Lightbown (1983) suggested that the durability of

of the effects instructional effects depends on whether the

instruction includes communicative activities and
of explicit also on whether there is continued exposure to the
target feature in communication after the
instruction instruction is over.
 Implicit knowledge is not easily lost once acquired
whereas explicit knowledge of grammar, like other
declarative facts, is easily forgotten.
 Does the length of the instruction have any impact
on its effect?
 It is reasonable to suppose that the longer the
instruction is,the more effective it will be.

The length of The length of the instructional treatment in the

studies we have considered varies considerably. The
the instruction studies that investigated CR tasks were of relatively
short duration (less than an hour)
Some of the studies involving explicit explanation
and practice activities lasted for weeks(e.g. in
Harley’s study the instruction continued for eight
weeks).
 BUT…
Norris and Ortega,suggested that various factors
such as the nature of the target structures
investigated moderate the effect that the length of

The length of the instruction has on learning.

the instruction For example,simple structures such as plural –s may

benefit from a ‘brief’ treatment whereas complex
structures such as relative clauses may not benefit
much even from a ‘long’ treatment.
  The effectiveness of explicit instruction may
depend on the choice of target structure.
 Some structures are inherently more difficult to
teach than others. this was investigated in another
Choice of meta-analysis carried out by Spada and

target Tomita(2010).
 They examined the target structures in a number
structure of studies and attempted to distinguish them in
terms of their complexity. Surprisingly, they found
that explicit instruction directed at complex forms
had the largest effect on measures based on free
construction.
  Explicit instruction can help learners develop
explicit knowledge of grammatical features.
 Explicit instruction plus practice-especially when
this includes opportunity to use the target
structure in communicative tasks-can contribute
to the development of implicit knowledge.

Some  Whether the effects of explicit instruction are

conclusions durable may depend on the extent to which

learners have continued exposure to the feature
and opportunity to use it subsequent to the period
of instruction
 Knowledge of metalnguage may be useful-at least
for older learners.it can assist the learning of
explicit knowledge.
  It may also be helpful if learners are asked to
verbalize the grammatical explanation they have
been given while performing a communicative
task.
 Explicit instruction consisting only of controlled
practice has not been found to be effective

Some  some grammatical features are more ‘teachable’

than others and the effect of explicit instruction
conclusions varies according to the choice of grammatical
target.
 Many of studies have involved instruction that is
both extensive and intensive. it is reasonable to
suppose that instruction directed at developing
implicit knowledge will need to be more extensive
than that aimed at explicit knowledge.
  Explicit instruction clearly helps learners to
Some acquire gammar.

conclusions It contributes to their explicit knowledge and,if a

learner is ‘ready’ can also lead to implicit
knowledge.
 Laufer (2005),for example,identified a number of
limitations of implicit instruction:
 Learners may not pay attention to new words if
Explicit they can understand the overall message

vocabulary  They do not engage sufficiently with new words

even if they succeed in guessing their meanings
instruction from context
 and they may not meet new words a sufficient
number of times to remember them.
  As Elgort and Nation (2010) pointed out,
‘deliberate learning can be used to quickly learn
the 2000 most frequent word families in English’
and can also at more advanced stages promote
Explicit depth of knowledge of words that were first
encountered incidentally.
vocabulary  Explicit vocabulary instruction involves deciding
instruction which lexical items to teach,which aspects of
these items are amenable to explicit
instruction,and which kinds of instructional
activities to employ.
  One of the key issues is whether or not to teach
words in lexical sets(e.g. apple,pear,banana in a
‘fruit’ set).
 Interference Theory Teaching words in a
lexical will not be effective. the theory assumes
that ‘as similarity increases between targeted
Choice of information and other information learnt either
items before or after the targeted information, the
difficulty of learning and remembering the
targeted information also increases’.
 In other words,it will be easier to learn a set of
unrelated words than a set of semantically related
items.
  Another possibility is teaching words in a thematically
related set (e.g. blackboard,chalks,and get into groups
in a ‘classroom set’). In this kind of set words
belonging to different parts of speech can be included.
 Tinkham (1997) reported a study that showed that
teaching words in thematically related sets facilitates
learning.
Choice of  AL-Jabri (2005) compared four conditions-presenting

items words: 1.in a semantic set 2.in an unrelated set 3.in a

thematic set and 4.contextually (i.e. thematically
unrelated words were presented in a reading passage)
 The above studies indicate that for beginner
learners,semantic clusters are more difficult to learn
than thematic clusters or unrelated words but for
more advanced learners it makes little difference how
words are grouped.
  Nation (2001) identified eight aspects of word
knowledge relating to the form,meaning and use
of a word.
Focus of  Schmitt (2008) considered that the ‘form-meaning
instruction link is the first and most essential lexical aspect
which must be acquired’ and argued that explicit
instruction was best equipped to achieve this.
  Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) proposed the
Involvement Load Hypothesis to explain the
differential effect of different kinds of instructional
activities on word learning.
 This proposes that the effectiveness of instruction
Effective depends on ‘need’ (i.e.whether the instructional

learning activity creates a need to learn the word), ‘search’

(whether the activity involves learners searching
activities for the meaning of a word as opposed to being just
given it) and ‘evaluation’ (whether the activity
requires learners to assess the appropriateness of
a word for a particular context).
 Which types of grammatical description is appropriate?
 As we have seen,the teacher guides favour simplified
explanations of grammatical rules based on

Evaluating the pedagogical grammar rather than full explanations

based on descriptive grammar.
pedagogical  However, we have seen that sociocultural theorists
claims take a very different view,arguing that learners
should be given ‘scientific descriptions’ and then be
encouraged to be verbalize these as they perform
communicative tasks.
  Many teacher educators suggest that metalanguage
should be used sparingly on the grounds that it plays no
role in ‘real language use’.
 However, SLA studies have shown that knowledge of
metalanguage correlates with learners’ L2 proficiency.

Is there a role  Ultimately,the case for or against metalanguage

depends on whether explicit knowledge is seen as
for playing a part in the learning process.

metalanguage  We have seen that both cognitive and sociocultural

theories claim that explicit knowledge can contribute to
? the acquisition of implicit knowledge.
 Perhaps,then,metalanguage deserves a more thoughtful
treatment in pedagogic literature. As we saw from
Borg’s(1988,1999) studies,some teachers and learners
recognize that metalanguage is both needed and
helpful.
  Both teacher educators and SLA researchers
recognize the value of inductive grammar
presentation. Teachers guides often recommend

Should explicit providing learners with opportunities to induce

grammatical rules rather than the teacher simply
explanation be explaining them.

inductive or  Many grammar practice books employ

consciousness-raising tasks in the ‘presentation’
deductive? stage of PPP(Present-Practice-Produce). SLA
studies investigating consciousness-raising tasks
suggest that CR tasks are as-and sometimes more-
effective than direct grammar instruction.
 As Ellis(1991) stated,what are the limitations to the
use of CR tasks?
 CR tasks do not guarantee acquisition of targeted
features as implicit L2 knowledge.

Limitations to  Some rules may be too complex to be learned explicitly.

the use of CR  CR tasks are better suited to older learners.

tasks  Completing CR task is time-consuming;

 While CR tasks are likely to appeal to learners with an
analytic/field independent style,they may not appeal to
learners with a more experiential/field dependent
learning style.
 There are two important caveats:
 Even free,meaningful practice has its limitations
as Lightbown (2000) acknowledged, because it
does not always ensure high levels of fluency and
accuracy in the use of the target structure

How useful is  The second caveats,which is closely related to the

first,is that presentation combined with
practice? meaningful practice may not be very effective in
teaching ‘new’ grammatical structures.
Conclusion: Practice shouldn’t be directed at new
structures but rather in helping learners achieve
greater accuracy in the use of structures that they
have already begun to acquire.
  The research indicates that explicit instructin of
vocabulary is helpful but that it needs to be
supported by continued contextual exposure to

How should the words taught.

 As was found to be the case with grammar
vocabulary be teaching,meaningful practice is more likely to be

taught? effective than controlled practice.

 Practice must also be intensive.learners need
repeated opportunities to encounter and use new
words
Thank you for your
attention