Explicit Form-Focused Instruction (FFI) and Second Language Acquisition This study discusses the efficacy of explicit grammar

explanation used during teaching a language. 2 reasons for examining the effect of explicit FFI - pedagogical (tradtionally language instruction was explicit, but is it really effective?) - theoretical (how do explicit and implicit knowledge connect) Implicit FFI attracts attention to target form is delivered spontaneously (e.g., in an otherwise communicationoriented activity) is unobtrusive (minimal interruption of communication of meaning) presents target forms in context makes no use of metalanguage encourages free use of the target form Explicit FFI directs attention to target form is predetermined and planned (e.g., as the main focus and goal of a teaching activity) is obtrusive (interruption of communicative meaning) presents target forms in isolation uses metalinguistic terminology (e.g., rule explanation) involves controlled practice of target form

Besides the distinction of explicity and implicity, instruction can also distinguished according to whether it is deductive (the rules are given to the learners) or inductive (the learner has to work out the rule). The implicit instruction happens without the awareness of learners of what is taught. Another distinction: - focus on forms: traditional approach of grammar, learners treat language as an object which is studied bit by bit - focus on form: draws students attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overriding focus is on meaning or communication (but is still not equal to focus on meaning!) The latter, focus on form, is not neccessarily implicit. It depends on the character of corrective feedback, whether it is implicit (unobtrusive reformulations of learners erroneous utterances) or explicit (overt correction or metalinguistic explanation). Explicit and implicit instruction can only be defined from the perspective of the teacher, the writer of the books etc., but that learning is implicit or explicit depends on the learner. Implicit learning: the learner has internalised a linguistic feature without awareness. Explicit learning involves awareness. Debate on implicit learning: - Scmidt: there are two kind of awareness: awareness as noticing (conscious attention to surface elements) and awareness as understanding, there is no such thing as complete implicit learning, as some degree of awareness (at the level of noticing) is required, implicit learning is learning without any metalinguistic awareness. - Williams: learning without awareness is possible - Ellis: the vast majority of our cognitive processing is unconscious

Explicit learning is simply learning that involves metalinguistic awareness. Learner can also learn intentionally (e.g. rote-learning of conjugation) or incidentally (e.g. acquisition of vocabulary during reading). Question: what is the relationship between explicit/implicit instruction and these other distinctions? - explicit instruction is directed at intentional, explicit learning - implicit instruction is aimed at implicit, incidental learning - but sometimes a external, instructional perspective may not match the internal, learners perspective (e.g. the student cannot acquire the teachers explicit explanation, but implicitly acquire other things, such as vocabulary due to the explanation) Knowledge: - disaggrement on the distinction of explicitness and implicitness: Paradis: distinct and separate others: they comprise poles on a continuum - disaggreement on the interaction between the two kind of knowledge: Krashen: they do not interact others, Ellis: strong inteface (i.e., skill-learning theory, explicit knowledge can convert into implicit knowledge through communicative practice),) or weak interface (i.e., consciousness-raising theory, explicit knowledge does not convert directly into implicit knowledge but rather facilitates its development indirectly by inducing attention to form) No straightforward correlation between explicit/implicit instruction and explicit/implicit knowledge. The final goal of explicit instruction is implicit knowledge (explicit knowledge is only a starting point). The effects of instruction - on learners ability to use the target structure in unplanned language use - may not be immediately evident. It is important to distinguish the effects of instruction in terms of the explicit/implicit knowledge distinction, since many instruments used in studies involved metalinguistic judgments, selected responses, or constrained constructed responses. Doughty: such assessment instruments do not measure linguistic competence (i.e., implicit knowledge) but rather they merely require knowledge of language as an object. Such measures favours explicit instruction, a different kind of assessment instrument is needed: freely constructed responses (e.g., a written composition or an oral narrative).

Types of explicit instruction: Deductive Inductive

Metalinguistic explanation (information about a specific linguistic property supported by examples)

Consciousness-raising tasks (a form of discovery learning) Practice activities (the students are either told or implicitly expected to derive metalinguistic awareness of the target feature, intentional, e.g. textmanipulating, text-creating) production based (error-avoiding, error-inducing) comprehension based (interpretation tasks consisting of structured input input that has been seeded with the target structure - and some form of operation - e.g., carrying out an action or pointing at an object in a picture - to demonstrate comprehension.) Learners are provided with feedback that is unambiguously corrective in force by indicating that an error has been committed, two types: Repetition (of the students incorrect utterance with the location of the error emphasised) Corrective recasts (reformulates the learners erroneous utterance with the correct form highlighted intonationally, some researchers find it implicit) the learner has to compare the original and the reformulated sentences

Questions about explicit proactive and reactive FFI: What is the effect of different ways of providing metalinguistic information on L2 learning? Smith: distinguishes four types according to the degree of elaboration and consciousness, but little effort has been made to investigate the specific effect of different types of instruction in metalinguistic knowledge What are the relative effects of deductive and inductive FFI on L2 acquisition? many different studies, they are difficult to compare o Erlam found conflicting results, with some studies favouring deductive instruction, others inductive, and some finding no difference

Proactive Explicit correction Metalinguistic feedback Reactive

o Fotos and Ellis: both teacher-provided metalinguistic explanation and a CR task resulted in significant gains in understanding of the target structure, later sudies by Foto found no statistically significant difference between these two types in a follow-up study o Mohamed: found that a CR task was more effective than metalinguistic explanation with groups of high intermediate ESL learners from mixed L1 backgrounds, but not with a group of low-intermediate learners o Leow: increased levels of meta-awareness correlated with greater conceptually driven processing such as hypothesis-testing and morphological rule formation, learners who demonstrated high levels of meta-awareness were better able to both recognize and produce the correct target forms None of these studies produced convincing evidence that proactive deductive FFI resulted in L2 implicit knowledge as the tests they used to measure learning were of the kind that were likely to tap explicit knowledge Does explicit deductive instruction result in the acquisition of L2 implicit knowledge? (key question!) o Norris/Ortega: such instruction is effective (and, in fact, more effective than implicit FFI) o Doughty: doubts the latter, the measures of acquisition employed measured explicit rather than implicit knowledge Other study resulted in completely mixed results, but explicit instruction involving metalinguistic information and practice activities seems effective if it is substantial, the relative contributions of the metalinguistic explanations and the practice to the efficacy of the instruction is not clear. Do practice activities work best with or without accompanying metalinguistic information? VanPattens theory of Input Processing Instruction: it is the structured input rather than the explicit information that was important for acquisition. Benati: explicit information does not play a major role in comprehension-based instruction Do input-based and production-based practice have differential effects on L2 acquisition? VanPattens theory predicts that input-based practice that draws attention to form meaning mappings will prove more effective than traditional, production practice, and studies support this. Input-based instruction results in superior performance to controlled output-based instruction when acquisition is measured by means of interpretation tests and in equal performance in discrete item production tests. Is there a relationship between the quantity of practice opportunities and L2 acquisition? The studies are problematic since correlation statistics do not address cause and effect, it is just as likely that acquisition determines the amount of practice individual learners receive in a classroom (i.e., learners who know a form are more likely to volunteer or be chosen by the teacher to practice it)

Reactive explicit FFI studies There is evidence from these studies that implicit feedback results in acquisition, but there is stronger evidence that explicit feedback is effective, in addition, some studies found it more effective.

Griggs: reactive metalinguistic activity assists development Terminology: consciousness-raising task: a pedagogic activity where the learners are provided with L2 data in some form and required to perform some operation on or with it, the purpose of which is to arrive at an explicit understanding of some regularity in the data (constrained) constructed responses: the types of task, where responses are not provided to the student, e.g. essay writing corrective feedback: typically involves a student receiving either formal or informal feedback on his or her performance on various tasks by a teacher deductive: method where a conclusion drawn from a given rule (or rules) discrete item: an item of language isolated from context (e.g. a suffic, a phoneme) error-inducing production activity: learners are led into making overgeneralization errors and then receive corrective feedback explicit correction: explicit provision of the correct form accompanied by a clear indication that what the learner said was incorrect focus on meaning: no attempt to induce attention to linguistic form at all inductive: a method where the conclusion is reached by summing up data instruction: attempts to intervene in the process of interlanguage development input-based instruction: instruction that focuses on exposure o input processing instruction: a type of grammar instruction whose purpose is to affect the ways in which learners attend to input data output-based instruction: production-based instruction, e.g. explanation of grammar rules followed by written and oral practice two other kinds communication-focused instruction: involves the use of tasks that focus learners attention on meaning form-focused instruction: any pedagogical effort used to draw the learners attention to language form interlanguage development: the development of interlanguage, which is an emerging linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a second language (or L2) who has not become fully proficient yet but is approximating the target language knowledge: implicit: unconscious (i.e., we are not aware of what we know implicitly), procedural, accessible for automatic processing, not verbalizable (except as an explicit representation), acquirable (i.e., can be internalized implicitly), and typically employed in unproblematic, free-flowing communication explicit: conscious, declarative,accessible only through controlled processing, verbalizable, learnable (in the sense that any piece of factual information is learnable), and typically employed when learners experience some kind of linguistic problem metalinguistic awareness/knowledge: the ability to objectify language as a process as well as a thing, helpful to explaining the execution and transfer of linguistic knowledge across languages metalinguistic feedback: it contains either comments, information, or questions related to the wellformedness of the students utterance, without explicitly providing the correct form selected response: it requires students to respond to a prompt by selecting an appropriate response, usually from answers that are provided