Implicit and Explicit Learning

Vocabulary can be taught and learned in a variety of ways. The purpose of this paper is
elaborating on three different approaches to teaching and learning vocabulary: implicit learning,
explicit learning and Data Driven Learning. Implicit learning mainly happens when the mind
is not focused on learning vocabulary, but somewhere else, such as understanding a text. In
contrast, explicit learning occurs through instruction by which learners’ attention is focused on
vocabulary as a language item. Apart from explicit and implicit approaches to teaching and
learning vocabulary, learning vocabulary through Data Driven Learning (DDL) is discussed in this
paper. DDL is a kind of inductive learning approach through which learners become their own
researchers finding examples and developing their own rules for language learning. Included in
this paper are some practical suggestions for enhancing vocabulary learning through each of
these three approaches.

This dissertation explores the use of explicit phonetic instruction to students acquiring a second language (L2) in a new modality. Studies of spoken language L2 teaching have shown that learners can be trained to attend to phonetic cues in their new language and that explicit training is the most effective means by which to achieve this. Second-language learners of American Sign Language (ASL) struggle with fingerspelling comprehension more than many other aspects of language-learning; previous work has suggested that part of this challenge is due to the inability to observe and make use of phonetic cues present in the fingerspelling stream. The goal of this dissertation is to determine whether explicit training can benefit ASL learners for fingerspelling comprehension tasks.

Two studies assessed an explicit phonetic training program for ASL learners. An implicit fingerspelling training based on a popular ASL curriculum was also developed and used as a control with which to compare the effect of the explicit training. Designed based on a combination of interactions with L2 students in the classroom, descriptions of coarticulatory features in fingerspelling production, and studies of cues L2 students use to comprehend fingerspelling, the explicit training consisted of two main portions. The first detailed the properties of hold versus transition segments in fingerspelling; the second focused on phonetic variation in fingerspelling production.

The first study involved 18 third-semester ASL students in a five-week summer session. The second involved 80 students taking ASL III in a 15-week fall semester. In both studies, students were divided into two balanced groups based on grades earned in their previous ASL course. One group received the explicit training and the other, the implicit fingerspelling training. Pre- and post-tests involved a fingerspelling comprehension task with two experimental conditions and a control condition. In one condition, periods in which signers hold a letter posture were masked (transitions-only), and in the other condition, periods of transition from posture to posture were masked (holds-only).

Results from the first study revealed a strong effect of the explicit training across experimental conditions, though participants struggle most with the transitions-only condition. Results from the second study revealed a weaker overall effect of the explicit training, but a stronger interaction with the transitions-only condition, which the explicit training helped to address specifically. Taken together, results from both experiments reveal that explicit instruction is more effective in improving students’ fingerspelling comprehension scores. These effects are not ephemeral. With only one exposure to the training program, which lasts approximately 30 minutes, higher scores persist three and six weeks post training.

This study examines the acquisition of L2 knowledge (Spanish determiners) by four groups of adolescents as (L2) Spanish learners, taking into consideration two types of instruction: implicit and explicit. Another purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effects of the type of instruction (implicit vs. explicit) on language transfer L1 English-L2 Spanish.   
The groups in this study were part of two different courses at a High School level in the United States during a winter trimester. Two groups were of higher proficiency and the other two, of lower proficiency. Groups with the same proficiency were instructed with both, implicit and explicit methods.
We focus on contrasting the results of both proficiency groups and their specific methods of instruction. Forty-five adolescent (L2) learners of Spanish carried out six written tasks (Timed Grammaticality Judgment Test, Untimed Grammaticality Judgment Test, L2 Achievement task, Truth-Value Judgment Task, Picture-Sentence Matching Task and Sentence-Picture Acceptability Judgment Task) before and immediately after the implicit and explicit methods of instruction were complete.
The research conducted in this thesis contains five questions, whose answers were addressed through the statistical analysis of the raw scores obtained in the different mentioned tasks. The research results show that the methods of instruction were significant taking into consideration the proficiency of the students. The higher proficiency group had higher scores than the lower proficiency group on all the measures of implicit and explicit knowledge, developing significantly more explicit knowledge representations of the forms tested than the lower proficiency group. In relation to transfer effects, results show that the explicit method can help the higher proficiency group to more resemble native speakers.

In the KBSM English syllabus, vocabulary learning is only incorporated in the teaching of the four main skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking as target words are usually taught implicitly. Often, learners are unaware of the different meanings of a word and its spelling due to the common method of teaching the target words. This study investigates the effectiveness of the use of vocabulary exercises for vocabulary teaching involving 60 selected students from Form Two classes of a suburban school in Ipoh. The mean scores of the pre-test and post-test are analysed by using descriptive statistics. The questionnaire in the student's feedback form was analysed descriptively in terms of frequency counts and percentage of responses. The open-ended written responses in the student's evaluation form are categorised and analysed using content analysis. The results suggest that the incorporation of vocabulary exercises is effective in learning the target words among Form Two learners.

THE  AIM  OF  THIS  QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL STUDY  WAS  TO  INVESTIGATE THE  EFFECTS  OF

FOCUS ON FORM AS A METHOD OF IMPLICIT INSTRUCTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING
AS A METHOD OF EXPLICIT INSTRUCTION ON STUDENTS' ABILITY TO LEARN GRAMMAR. TO
THIS  END,  TWO  INTACT  CLASSES  OF  20  LEARNERS  WERE  CHOSEN  FOR  TEACHING  THE
TARGET STRUCTURES (PREPOSITIONS OF TIME AND PLACE) THROUGH DIFFERENT METHODS
OF INSTRUCTION. THE PARTICIPANTS WERE YOUNG MALE LEARNERS AT ELEMENTARY
LEVEL. THE TWO INTACT CLASSES WERE ASSIGNED TO COMPARE GROUPS  OF FOCUS ON
FORM GROUP (IMPLICIT GROUP) AND CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING GROUP (EXPLICIT GROUP). IN
FOCUS ON FORM GROUP, THE TARGET STRUCTURES WERE ENHANCED VISUALLY WITH THE
TECHNIQUE OF BOLDING. IN CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING GROUP THE TARGET STRUCTURES
WERE TAUGHT EXPLICITLY. THE PARTICIPANTS WERE GIVEN SOME DATA AND WERE
REQUIRED TO INDUCE THE RULE WITH THE HELP OF PEERS OR THE TEACHER.  A PRETEST
AND A POSTTEST WERE CONDUCTED TO COMPARE THE TWO GROUPS' PERFORMANCES
BEFORE AND AFTER THE INSTRUCTION. THE RESULTS INDICATED THE OUTPERFORMANCE OF
THE  PARTICIPANTS  IN  THE  EXPLICIT  GROUP  OVER  THE  PERFORMANCE  OF  THE
PARTICIPANTS IN  THE IMPLICIT GROUP ON THE POSTTEST. THE FINDINGS SUPPORT THE
ARGUMENTS REGARDING THE IMPORTANCE OF METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS IN LEARNING
GRAMMAR.

Some low-IQ savants can give the day of the week corresponding to decades’ worth of dates, but cannot state the number of dates in a week or solve a simple addition or subtraction problem. This divergence seems paradoxical because we divide the world into  conscious, complex, “high-level” cognitive processes and unconscious, simple, “low-level” perceptual-motor ones.  Yet savant abilities fit neither category: savants’ abilities, though not fully conscious, involve more than rote memory.  Indeed, savants eventually come to resemble neurotypical experts, and may even become creative.  Unsupervised neural network models may illustrate how savants learn: through unconscious, yet very high-level, pattern recognition.  Savants seek out domains that have meaningful structural regularities, e.g. calendars, math, or music, and spend a great deal of time and attention on such domains.  They may implicitly learn these regularities through a sort of pattern recognition.  This theory implies that pattern recognition is more than just a low-level perceptual process, and more importantly, that complex cognitive processes can be unconscious.

Strategy-Based Instruction (SBI) is a learner-focused approach to teaching that emphasizes employing learning strategies with the goal of enhancing both learner autonomy and proficiency in language contexts. SBI is multifaceted phenomenon and note taking strategy as one of its subcategories is writing down the main concepts, significant points, outline, or digest of information presented orally or in writing (Brown, 2007). The present paper reported the findings of a study that investigated the effect of explicit strategy training on learners’ achievement test scores in a higher education setting. To conduct the study, sixty participants in the same level of proficiency were selected purposely (N=60). They were taught how to take note based on the Cornell method (particular note taking method). Both questionnaire and interview were applied to elicit the attitudes of participants about strategy training in listening comprehension. The results indicated that note taking training strategy, in contrast to Iranian EFL learners’ attitudes has significant effects on Iranian listening test performance. However, the findings demonstrated that explicit strategy training is ineffective when there is not enough time to do so.
Keywords: Strategy-based instruction, Explicit strategy training, Note taking strategy, Cornell method, Learning strategies, Listening comprehension.

In this study, a teaching sequence including an explicit-reflective teaching approach that improves students' nature of science (NOS) understandings while teaching a science subject, chemical equilibrium, in chemistry curriculum was developed and the effect of it on students' understanding of NOS development was examined. The case study approach was used in this research. 15 high school 11 th grade students joint to instruction which was given with teaching sequence including explicit-reflective inquiry activities that was implemented three hours weekly for four weeks. The data were collected through open-ended questionnaire, semi-structured interviews and written reflections. The findings of the study showed that it had a positive effect on both students' understandings of many aspects of NOS and increase of their interests in chemistry course. ÖZ Bu çalışmada, kimya öğretim programında yer alan kimyasal denge konusunun öğretimi sırasında öğrencilerin bilimin doğası ile ilgili anlayışlarını açık-düşündürücü yaklaşımla geliştirme amaçlı bir öğretim dizini geliştirilmiş ve bu öğretim dizininin öğrencilerin bilimin doğası ile ilgili anlayışlarına etkisi incelenmiştir. Açık-düşündürücü sorgulayıcı-araştırma etkinliklerini içeren bu öğretim dizini ile verilen eğitime 15 lise 3. sınıf öğrencisi katılmış ve öğretim dizini haftada 3 saat olmak üzere dört hafta süreyle uygulanmıştır. Durum çalışması yöntemi kullanılan bu araştırmada anket, görüşme ve yazılı geri bildirim formu gibi çeşitli nitel veri kaynakları kullanılmış ve verilerin analizinde nitel analiz yöntemleri kullanılmıştır. Çalışmanın bulguları, öğrencilerin hem bilimin doğasının bir çok boyutu ile ilgili anlayışlarında olumlu yönde değişimler olduğunu hem de öğrencilerin kimya derslerine karşı olumlu bir bakış açısı geliştirdiklerini göstermiştir. Anahtar Sözcükler: Bilimin doğası, açık-düşündürücü yaklaşım, kimyasal denge öğretimi

In the KBSM English syllabus, vocabulary learning is only incorporated in the teaching according to the four main skills; reading, writing, listening and speaking as target words are usually taught implicitly. Often, learners may miss out the different meaning that can be accounted for a word and its spelling due to the common method used to teach the target words. This study investigated the effectiveness of the use of pictorial vocabulary for vocabulary teaching involving 60 selected students from Form Three classes of a suburban school in Ipoh. The mean scores of the pre and post-tests are analysed by using descriptive statistics. The questionnaire in the student's evaluation form was analysed descriptively in terms of frequency counts and percentages of responses. An interview was also conducted to clarify the findings. The results suggest that the incorporation of pictorial vocabulary is effective in learning the target words among Form Three learners.

In this research paper, the researcher's intention was to design an instrument that is able to measure learning under two different conditions: explicit and implicit learning. Exploring explicit and implicit learning is gaining more and more attention nowadays in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). Quantitative method was used in this study to investigate which learning mechanism proves to be more efficient in the selected sample. The present study involved Hungarian technical school, secondary school, and university students from Budapest (N = 40) who participated in completing an Artificial Grammar Learning (AGL) task. The most important finding of the present research endeavour is that implicit learning has proven to be more effective than explicit learning in the case of the selected participants and this was a statistically significant finding. The pedagogical implication of this study is that the effectiveness of implicit learning should be reconsidered by EFL teachers in Hungary.

Learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in an enjoyable and challenging environment can make an appropriate context for promoting language achievement. It seems textbooks play a pivotal role in this regard. This study aimed at examining the impact of the supplementary materials on learners' emotional stance and their perceptions of classroom activities (interest, challenge, joy, and choice). To do so, a three-phase study was designed:  in phase 1, to evaluate Prospect series (textbook taught in Iranian junior high schools) based on emotional factors, a questionnaire measuring the emotional side of the series was utilized. In the second phase, taking into account the obtained results of the first phase and according to Mortiboy’s (2005) guidelines for teaching with emotional intelligence, supplementary materials were designed. In the third phase, the designed tasks and activities were implemented in a class (experimental group).  The results of t-test and multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) indicated that the designed tasks had a positive and significant effect on learners' emotional facet, perceptions of class activity, and language achievement.

Using written tests, I investigated the range of English vocabulary that is incidentally acquired by students in their first year of secondary education. My test group consists of two classes, one in B-stream in regular education and one in BuSO, which is special education. Two different tests were designed in order to reveal their active and passive knowledge together with a questionnaire in order to gain information about their language backgrounds. My hypotheses were that the tests would reveal a more extensive knowledge of English vocabulary by B-stream students than by BuSO students. Additionally I expected that the passive knowledge in both educational types would be to a great extent larger than the active knowledge. The test results will be presented and discussed in chapter 6, where a careful analysis of these results is made comparing the knowledge of B-stream and BuSO students as well as their active and passive knowledge. First, however, I provided some theoretical background in chapter 4, illuminating some of the terminology and concepts needed in order to completely comprehend this investigation and theories in which the investigation is embedded.

New research could ease the way to second language learning
16 February 2017

Research by a language teaching expert from the University of Auckland could bring major changes to second language teaching and improve chances of success for those who fail in traditional classes.

Dr Shaofeng Li, a senior lecturer of applied language studies in the Faculty of Arts, is looking at the learning phenomenon that enables learners to pick up a foreign language through exposure to and use of the language, not through challenging, conscious study.

He wants to identify the key to this type of learning and find a way to bring it into the classroom.

“Traditionally, we talk about people having an ‘aptitude’ for language, and what we mean is that they learn better than others under traditional methods,” says Dr Li.  “They are good at memorising words, analysing sentence structure and mimicking pronunciation.”

What Dr Li wants to do is identify and measure the aptitudes for learning language ‘unconsciously’ – that is, learning without being aware that you are actually ‘learning’ – and look at how this knowledge could be used in the classroom to maximize learning outcomes. 

His research has been awarded a $300,000 Marsden Fund grant and will start in March.

For a country of dedicated travellers, English-speaking New Zealanders have a poor record of language learning. Many of us have sat in classrooms with our verbs and tenses, stumbling over pronunciation and dreaming that one day we will know enough to chat easily with the locals on our travels.

Unfortunately, for most, dreaming is as far as it goes. The challenge of mastering another language is just too hard and so we remain monolingual. Apparently 80 percent of New Zealanders speak one language, and high school language take-up continues to fall.

“It is a fact that many people dread learning a foreign language,” says Dr Li, who is based at the faculty’s School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics.

“Taught consciously, it is challenging. It takes a lot of effort and English speakers in particular can be less motivated than people who speak other languages,” says Dr Li.

But, he points out, we all learnt the language of our birth effortlessly and efficiently so we know there is a natural ability within all of us. “Contrary to what many people assume, adults possess a similar ability, although it may not be the same as children’s language faculty.”

He is confident his research will identify where this ability lies and how it can be exploited for adults with the ultimate aim of making it easier for everyone to enjoy the benefits of fluency in a second language.

“Learning another language widens your vision and gives you another perspective of the world. It enables you to appreciate other cultures and deal with people in a way that is beneficial for your personal life and career development,” says Dr Li.

English is Dr Li’s second language – he was born and educated in China and learnt traditionally by memorising words and perfecting grammar. His speaking skills, he says, came from living and working in English speaking countries – the US and New Zealand.

“But maybe if I’d been taught differently, it would not have taken me 20 or 30 years to get the skills I have today."

Relevant links:

Auckland University: https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/news-events-and-notices/news/news-2017/02/new-research-could-ease-the-way-to-second-language-learning-.html

Xinhua News Agency: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-02/16/c_136061024.htm

Chinese government: http://www.china.org.cn/world/Off_the_Wire/2017-02/16/content_40299262.htm

China News Service: https://www.ecns.cn/2017/02-16/245650.shtml

IntroductionPreviously, one of the most controversial issues about grammar was whether to teach it or not. Some, such as Krashen (1981), assume that second language learning is very much like the acquisition of first language. Krashen argues that comprehensible input is the only true cause of second language acquisition. He recommends that teachers should abandon grammar teaching, and concentrate instead on providing lots of comprehensible input so that learners can acquire a second language naturally, in much the same way they have acquired their mother tongue. According to Richard (as cited in Celce-Murica, 1988, p.1), the basic assumption of such an approach is that "communicative classrooms provide a better environment for second language acquisition than classrooms dominated by formal instruction." Richard claims that no actual empirical studies have been conducted proving that communicative classrooms produce better language learners than the more traditional teacher...

Shaffer, C.S. (2010). The effects of feedback on recognition memory: Learning the experimenter’s design. Unpublished honours thesis,  University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada.

Previous research by Kantner and Lindsay (Experiment 4, 2010) has suggested that accuracy feedback may have beneficial effects on recognition performance when a categorical rule is confounded with studied/non-studied items. The current experiments were designed as improved replications of the Kantner and Lindsay (2010) experiment. Using their findings and other research on category acquisition and implicit learning, I predicted that feedback might enable participants to reply on feelings of fluency that arose from sensitivity to the underlying structure of studied items. The presence of feedback and the categorical confound varied between participants. Experiment 1 (N = 37) failed to replicate Kantner and Lindsay's (2010) findings of tacit sensitivity to the confound. Participants were unable to improve recognition performance when items were confounded with size relative to a breadbox. In Experiment 2 (N = 45), when studied/non-studied items were confounded with living versus non-living object names, participants provided with feedback demonstrated significant improvements in recognition performance. Contrary to the initial prediction, feedback enabled participants to explicitly learn the rule separating studied and non-studied items. Practical and theoretical implications for memory and learning are discussed.

Statistical or sequential learning (SL) involves comprehending environmental patterns in which some items precede other items with a given likelihood. SL is thought to occur without attention or consciousness (or explicit knowledge) of the learned patterns and thus is sometimes considered to be implicit learning. However, this assumption is still debatable (Daltrozzo & Conway, 2014). We examined the role of selective attention and pattern consciousness (PC) in SL using event-related potentials (ERP) with healthy adults. Thirty-four participants (27 females, 18-49 years) performed a Flanker task to assess their level of selective attention, followed by a visual SL task while ERPs were recorded. Participants’ level of PC was assessed via a questionnaire. In the SL task, participants viewed a sequence of different stimuli on the screen and were instructed to press a button as fast as possible, when they saw a target stimulus. They were unaware that: 1.) two predictor items were embedded in the sequence and 2.) the items predicted target occurrence with high or low probability. ERPs were time-locked to predictor onsets. The mean ERP between 200 and 700ms post-predictor onset revealed an interaction between target occurrence probability, PC, attention, and two scalp topographic factors. Post-hoc tests indicated that higher attention was related to a more rostral left lateralized effect under high PC and a left lateralization of SL ERP effects under low PC. These neural findings suggest that both attention and PC modulate SL.

Can people learn complex information without conscious awareness? Implicit learning—learning without awareness of what has been learned—has been the focus of intense investigation over the last 50 years. However, it remains controversial whether complex knowledge can be learned implicitly. In the research reported here, we addressed this challenge by asking participants to differentiate between sequences of symbols they could not perceive consciously. Using an operant-conditioning task, we showed that participants learned to associate distinct sequences of crowded (nondiscriminable) symbols with their respective monetary outcomes (reward or punishment). Overall, our study demonstrates that sensitivity to sequential regularities can arise through the nonconscious temporal integration of perceptual information.

This paper aims to explore the utilisation of active learning strategies in teaching conversational implicatures to Croatian EFL learners, as well as to question their attitudes towards the applicable value of pragmatic competence in second language acquisition, with special focus on the use of conversational implicatures. Although somewhat neglected in the school curricula, since the first mention of the term communicative competence (Hymes 1966), interlanguage pragmatics and pragmatic competence play an important role in SLA. Kasper defines pragmatic competence as the “knowledge of communicative action and how to carry it out, and the ability to use language appropriately according to context” (1997). Pragmatic incompetence, on the other hand, may lead to misunderstandings and frustrations in communication (Murray 2011). Even though, according to Kasper (1997), it is not possible to teach pragmatic competence directly, “classroom instruction can be a means of providing opportunities for learners to raise their awareness of pragmatic areas”. Conversational implicatures are of particular importance since their accurate pragmatic interpretation requires being familiar with the semantic interpretation of the meaning, speaker’s intention and the context (Grice 1975, Kordić 1991).
Based on these theoretical premises, we have constructed a research to test the applicability of procedures and activities which are directed towards helping the students to recognise conversational implicatures and to inductively reach possible underlying conversational maxims. It is important to note that Croatian students are not explicitly taught pragmatics throughout the compulsory education; they first encounter this term and discipline if they opt to study languages in the higher education cycle. With this in view, the activities that were devised for this particular purpose aim to raise EFL students' awareness of conversational implicatures in English language; in other words, they should be able to comprehend, use, produce and identify indirect and non-literal utterances in English.
The research was conducted with a group of 25 students, B2 level of proficiency in English. The class is constructed as a workshop consisting of three parts. In the opening part inductive method is employed to introduce the students to the concept of implicatures and its occurrence in everyday communicative situation. This is followed by the main part which includes a short theoretical framework and several activities based on active learning strategies, such as interactive, cooperative and problem-based and learning. The final part offers an overview of the class which is followed by an exit questionnaire exploring students’ attitudes towards the importance of pragmatic competence. The results of the questionnaires along with the information gathered through structured observation of students’ responses throughout the workshop offer an insight into possible active strategies for teaching pragmatic competencies, evaluation of inductive method and students’ awareness of the importance of pragmatic knowledge. Furthermore, the results are expected to provide incentive for further pragmatic research in Croatian SLA studies, which will hopefully help the inclusion of interactive activities which develop pragmatic competencies into existing EFL curricula.

Las teorías implícitas cumplen una función esencial en lo que se refiere a rapidez de respuesta y eficiencia en los procesos cognitivos frente a entornos estables. Las teorías explícitas, por su parte, cumplen la función de adaptar los procesos cognitivos a entornos cambiantes, la posibilidad de adoptar otras perspectivas, la posibilidad de generar hipótesis tentativas, la posibilidad de comunicarse con otros.
Pozo (2003) plantea un modelo de hélice para poner de manifiesto la relación entre el nivel de las creencias (teorías implícitas) y el nivel de conocimiento (teorías explícitas). Las creencias serían sometidas a procesos de explicitación hasta convertirse en conocimiento, que luego de ajustes y verificaciones podría ser nuevamente incorporado a la base de creencias. El tema central de este trabajo es el de analizar con detalle esta dinámica de interacción mutua entre estos dos niveles representacionales.

It is obvious that more extensive work is needed in developing historical materials that address nature of science (NOS) concepts that will be implemented by teachers. Owing to the importance of meeting this need, research problem of this study is to design historical vignettes focused on the concept of chemical equilibrium which lies at the heart of high school and university chemistry topics by integrating NOS conceptions and to investigate whether the explicit-reflective teaching approach was effective in enhancing high school students' views of NOS. This study aims to examine the effects of nature of science instruction with interactive historical vignette on student conceptions of (NOS) and student development. Participants were a total of 17 eleventh grade students, 7 females (41%) and 10 males (59%), in public high school in Ankara, Turkey. Adopting qualitative research techniques, the study used open-ended questions to evaluate students' understandings of NOS and development, and reveal their accomplishments in the process. The results of this study indicate that the explicit-reflective approach to teaching of the chemical equilibrium unit to include NOS instruction as integrated within that content through interactive historical vignettes was effective in enhancing participant students' views of NOS.