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Abstract: Through the introduction of three pairs of conceptions in implicit/ explicit dimension, it is clear that they are completed with each other in the process of second language acquisition. During the process, the teaching strategies are to speed up the development but not to endow the leaner with language competence. For the explicit instruction, it falls into two groups: metacognitive counseling techniques and guided cognitive learning strategies; on the other hand, for the implicit instruction, three types of implicit teaching techniques have involved: implicit techniques of audioliguilism, experiential teaching techniques, and techniques for creating a state of receptiveness in the mind of the learners.
Key words: implicit/explicit learning;implicit/explicit knowledge;implicit/explicit instruction;teaching technique
1.Introduction
From the present situation of English learning or teaching in the classroom in middle school, even in college school, the main task for the teachers and learners is to deal with the vocabulary and grammar. It seems that it is an unmovable principle that learning or teaching language must deal with the vocabulary and grammar since the vocabulary is the bricks of language building and the grammar is the skeleton of that building. Thus, both the teachers and learners consider these two parts as the most important aspects in language learning. However, though it is no wrong for both of learners and teachers to focus their attention on these two parts, it is kind of pity that the language learning or teaching go to the other extreme because of overemphasizing the vocabulary and grammar. As a result, the process of the second language acquisition becomes a process of language knowledge explanation and reciting. One of the scholars says: “During the whole period of middle school, about six years, the students have learned about 2500 English words and they nearly have got all the grammar rules of English, but it is very pity that they seldom can read, listen, write and speaking freely.” (Du xiu fang, 2000) Why does this result of English instruction and learning appear? It really haunts many educators in this field. As we all know “no pains, no gains”, for the middle students, even all the English learners, every year they spend much of their time and energies on language learning, but how much they get is a big question for them. Few of them can reach native competence after several years’ hard-working on language learning, Selinker states that in SLA learning, this absolute success (native speaker competence) in a second language affects, as we know from observation, a small percentage of learning, perhaps a mere 5%. ( Selinker, 1972, p.36)
Since the percentage of success is so small that it is a little bit disappointed for language learners and teachers. Some questions rise: “can language be taught?” and “do the learners learn what they are taught?” About this issue, Selinker referred that the second language learner who actually achieves native speaker competence, can not possibly have been taught this competence since linguists are daily –in almost every generative study –discovering new and fundamental facts about particular languages. Successful learners, in order to achieve this native- speaker competence, must have acquired these facts (and most probably important principles of language organization) without having explicitly been taught them.(Selinker, 1972, p.36) Chomsky also expresses a very similar view “……it must be recognized that one does not learn the grammatical structure of a second language through ‘explanation and instruction’ beyond the most elementary rudiments, for the simple reason that no one has enough explicit knowledge about this structure to provide explanation and instruction.”(qtd in Selinker, 1972, p.52) Therefore, Stern stated that “language teaching …….is teaching of the language, not teaching about the language”. (Stern, 1992)
For the learners,“it is not the case that the learners learn everything they are taught or that they eventually know only what they are taught.”(M. Lightbown &Nina Spada, 2002, p.169) Thus, A. Reber divided the learning pattern into two parts, one is implicit learning, which is a less conscious learning pattern with great potential; the other is explicit learning, which needs learner’s great consciousness.(qtd in Zhang jianlin & Mao jinping, 2004) What the learner gained mostly depends on these two learning patterns. Since the great potential of these two learning patterns, it gives the pedagogy experts a space to rethink, to explore a more suitable or available teaching method, that is implicit/ explicit teaching strategy which was raised by Stern.
2.Literature review
In the implicit / explicit field, there are three pairs of important conceptions which should be mentioned:implicit / explicit knowledge, implicit / explicit learning and implicit / explicit instruction. These three pairs are completed each other in second language acquisition. According to Bialystok, “she developed a model of second language learning including three knowledge sources which she labeled: other knowledge, explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge”. (qtd in Stern, 1992,p.332) For the implicit knowledge, “it is developed through exposure to communicative language use and is facilitated by the strategy of ‘functional practicing’, while explicit knowledge arises when learners focus on the language code, and is facilitated by ‘formal practicing’”.(Ellis, 1997,p.356) It is obvious that the explicit knowledge is about the language knowledge itself which can be explained explicitly, however, the implicit knowledge is about the performing competence of the language which the learners are not aware of holding it. To some extent, the knowledge is the product existing in the mind of the learners.
Implicit learning is defined as learning without awareness of what is being learned, and explicit learning is a more explicit process where various mnemonics, heuristics and strategies are employed to induce a representational system (qtd in Zhao yi, 2007, p.17). Up to now, it is necessary to distinguish two terms: learning refers to the process, while knowledge refers to the product. But for implicit / explicit instruction, what this term—instruction performs is to speed up this process to get the knowledge. About these two concepts of implicit/explicit instruction, there is no established terminology. But Stern referred them to this definition: “It is a key issue that in second language acquisition whether the learner should be taught to approach the learning task consciously as an intellectual exercise, or whether he should be encouraged to avoid thinking about the language and absorb it intuitively” (Stern, 1992,P. 327).The former is called explicit teaching while the latter is called implicit teaching. These two teachings represent two dimensions in second language teaching and learning. Stern (1992) proposed a contrastive account of the explicit-implicit teaching dimension with the following Figure 1:(see next page)
In this figure, it is obvious that explicit and implicit are two instructions including many strategies which construct a contrast between them. And it is quite clear about the definitions of these two instructions in general. From this figure, the features of explicit and implicit teachings are also quite clear, which offer a theoretical basis for the principles set in the present study.
Figure1 The explicit-implicit dimension in language teaching and learning strategies (Stern, 1992, p.327)
3.Reflections on SLA teaching from implicit/explicit learning theories
As above mentioned, the students do not learn all of what they are taught, and at the same time, they still do not only learn what they are taught. Some certain teaching method typically gives the students the opportunity to learn only a very restricted number of words and sentence types. But it does not mean that the students only know the restricted words and sentence. Sometimes they can use certain expression perfectly without any awareness, while sometimes something thought available in the input does not mean they will acquire it right away. Of course, there are many factors which affect the learner’s learning. From the perspective of implicit / explicit learning, it is clear that learner learns something consciously, others unconsciously. For the conscious learning, they get the explicit knowledge. For the unconscious learning, they get the language competence without awareness. Therefore, it is no doubt that the students do not only know what they are taught or know all of what they are taught since no one could master the explicit principles of the language totally. After knowing more about the learners’ learning pattern, it will provide the pedagogy experts some information which would encourage them to reflect on instruction in daily teaching. Thus, some methodologists raise their attention on implicit / explicit instruction, or in this field, such as: Stern (1992), Palmer (1922), Bloomfield (1933) etc.
3.1Re-conception of the role of instruction in SLA classroom
According to the introduction of three important conceptions on implicit / explicit dimension, it is clear that these three conceptions do not completely separate from each other. On the contrary, these three pairs are completed each other in second language acquisition. The brief relationship among them can be put into following diagram:
From the diagram, it is clear that the function of implicit/explicit instruction is to speed up this learning process continuously. Obviously, it makes a big challenge to the traditional conception of teacher’s role. Traditionally, in the classroom, the students expect their teacher to explain the language knowledge as explicit as possible and as much as possible (conclusion from a survey on good teacher figure). It is no wonder that the students have such requirements to the teacher since the thousands of years’ definition of teacher in China. From ancient China to now, we have the dimension that it seems that “the teacher must/should know everything”. This is what the students or the society expect. To some extent, it is the social identity of the teachers in China. However, theoretically speaking, according to Selinker, Chomsky and Stern, we know it is impossible for an English teacher to explain the language of English completely explicitly; even the linguists can not, either. It is just as Stern stated that: “language teaching is teaching of language, but not teaching about language knowledge.” (Stern, 1992, P.329) The techniques of implicit instruction encourage the learners to approach the new language globally and intuitively rather than through a process of conscious reflection and problem-solving so as to approach the native speaker competence as much as possible. The rational for an implicit instruction can be set as (a) language are much too complex to be fully describe; (b) even if the entire rule system could be described, it would be impossible to keep all the rules in mind an to rely on a consciously formulated system for effective learning(Stern, 1992, P.339). Thus, it is necessary for the instructors to put this teaching strategy into teaching practicing.
What the teacher’s main task is in the classroom is to guide the students to learn the language effectively, but not to be an explainer of the language knowledge. According to Vygotsky, the language learners have the “zone of proximal development (ZPD). For the teachers, he argued that “a teacher should be a ‘tram driver’, who organizes the social environment of learning.” (qtd in Lju Guk &David Kellogg, 2007). The teacher might do this by mediating a leaner task for a single learner or a group of learners, who then mediate the task for their classmates in group-work. It is clear that the role of a teacher in the classroom is a guider, not an explainer. What the teacher’s task is to organize or to guide learner to approach their ZPD so as to learn the language effectively. It is similar to Krashen’s “input hypothesis” which states that human acquires language in only one way by understanding messages or by receiving comprehensible input. The process of acquiring the language is from the current level i to i+1 (qtd in Mitchell & Myles, 1998, p. 126) which is beyond the current level of competence. Clearly, the teacher’s task is still to stimulate the learner’s potentiality to reach i+1. And in Krashen’s opinion, “speech is not taught directly, but ‘emerges’ on its own. Early speech is typically not grammatically accurate.” (Charles F. Leyba, 1994, p.57). Therefore, it is necessary for the learners to have a new conception of the teacher’s role in their process of language leaning. The function of the instructors is just to speed up the process, but could not to endow them with language competence.
3.2 Reflections on the ways of SLA teaching From the figure1 (above mentioned), it is obvious that we get a comparison between implicit/ explicit learning and teaching in general. Since the characteristics of implicit/ explicit dimension, it makes the implicit/ explicit instruction on the agenda. Some methodologists favor implicit instruction, such as Palmer (1922) and Bloomfield (1933), both of them emphasize habit formation in SLA, and favor the techniques of repetition, memorizing, imitation and automatization, while others prefer the explicit instruction. Advocates of an explicit teaching strategy assume that second language learning is, for many people, a cognitive process leading to an explicit knowledge of language (Stern, 1992,p.334). Such learners focus on the characteristic features of the language, and make an effort to acquire a conscious and conceptual knowledge of it. For them, they want to know how the language functions, how it hangs together, what words mean, how meaning is conveyed and so on. That is to say, an explicit teaching strategy encourages the students to look upon learning as an intellectually challenging and worthwhile task. On the other hand, advocates of implicit teaching strategy encourages learners to consider the language learning as a more active , less intellectual, more practical, and more readily accessible process.
According to Stern (1992), the techniques within the explicit instruction fall into two groups: metacognitive counseling techniques and guided cognitive learning strategies. Metacognitive counseling techniques bring together various acts of advice to learners during the course of instruction. Sometimes this advice consists of hints on what to do and what not to do in order to learn efficiently. On the other hand, guided cognitive learning strategies contain observation, conceptualization, explanation, mnemonic devices, rule discovery, relational thinking and so on. These techniques can be seen as aids in creating mental links in second language acquisition, which help learners to store information efficiently and retrieve data more easily.
Compared with explicit instruction, an implicit instruction encourages learners to approach the new language globally and intuitively rather than through a process of conscious reflection and problem-solving. According to Ellis, “underlying the whole question of the relationship between explicit and implicit knowledge and how they are internalized is the question of “consciousness” in language learning (Ellis, 1997, p.361). In the viewpoint of Stern (1992), the main points of an implicit instruction are considered as intuitiveness and automatization, which refer to help learners to learn a language intuitively and to get familiar with the language automatically. So according to Stern (1992), three types of implicit teaching techniques have involved: implicit audio-lingual techniques, experiential teaching techniques, and techniques for creating a state of receptiveness in the mind of the learners. Implicit audio-lingual techniques focus on the language but attempt to reduce the mental effort in coping with it. They have provided learners with useful ways of practicing language items without having to think hard. For example, if we want to teach the question pattern do you + verb as in “Do you know?”, the focus on lexical items such as see, understand, believe, diverts the learners attention from the question pattern, which is practiced automatically. The second type, experiential teaching techniques, from another aspect, shift the attention of learners away from the language altogether and direct it to topics, tasks, activities and substantive content. The third type is creating state of receptiveness, which aims at overcoming learners’ deeper psychological resistance to second language learning which is difficult to reach by pure rational approaches.
4.Conclusion
Through the introduction of three pairs of conceptions (implicit/ explicit knowledge, implicit/ explicit learning and implicit/ explicit instruction) in implicit/ explicit dimension, we know that they are completed with each other in the process of second language acquisition process. Since there the implicit/ explicit knowledge exist, it is quite rational for the teacher to introduce something explicitly, while others implicitly. No one could explain the language completely explicitly because the language is so complex. Thus, it is necessary for the students to have a new view of teacher and the teacher’s role in classroom. As above mentioned, some experts acknowledge that the knowledge of language can be taught, but the native speaker competence can not be taught. The language competence is a result of continuous process of implicit/ explicit learning which employ many techniques of implicit/ explicit learning.
Although many discussions above show that some methodologists favor either an explicit or an implicit approach, it is sure that there is no absolute boundary of these two approaches, they are not independently separated from each other. For example, for grammar teaching, Krashen argued that: “An overemphasis on conscious grammar has the undesirable result of encouraging over-use of the Monitor. But completely eliminating grammar robs our students of the chance to use conscious leaning as a supplement for acquisition” (Krashen &Terrell, qtd in Stern, 1992, p.331). Thus, in practice, it is wise to combine these two approaches together. And the mix will be varied according to the language topics, the course objectives, the characteristics of the students, and the needs of the teaching situation etc.
References:
[1]Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics. Vol. x13.
[2]Stern,H.H.(1992).Issues and options in language teaching. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
[3]Lightbown,p.& Spada,N.(2002).How language are learned. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
[4]Ellis,R. (1997). The study of second language acquisition.Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
[5]Lju Guk & David Kellogy. (2007). The ZPD and whole class teaching: Teacher-led and student-led interactional mediation of tasks. Language Teaching Research.
[6]Mitchell,R.& Myles, F. (1998).Second language learning theories. London: Aronld.
Key words: implicit/explicit learning;implicit/explicit knowledge;implicit/explicit instruction;teaching technique
1.Introduction
From the present situation of English learning or teaching in the classroom in middle school, even in college school, the main task for the teachers and learners is to deal with the vocabulary and grammar. It seems that it is an unmovable principle that learning or teaching language must deal with the vocabulary and grammar since the vocabulary is the bricks of language building and the grammar is the skeleton of that building. Thus, both the teachers and learners consider these two parts as the most important aspects in language learning. However, though it is no wrong for both of learners and teachers to focus their attention on these two parts, it is kind of pity that the language learning or teaching go to the other extreme because of overemphasizing the vocabulary and grammar. As a result, the process of the second language acquisition becomes a process of language knowledge explanation and reciting. One of the scholars says: “During the whole period of middle school, about six years, the students have learned about 2500 English words and they nearly have got all the grammar rules of English, but it is very pity that they seldom can read, listen, write and speaking freely.” (Du xiu fang, 2000) Why does this result of English instruction and learning appear? It really haunts many educators in this field. As we all know “no pains, no gains”, for the middle students, even all the English learners, every year they spend much of their time and energies on language learning, but how much they get is a big question for them. Few of them can reach native competence after several years’ hard-working on language learning, Selinker states that in SLA learning, this absolute success (native speaker competence) in a second language affects, as we know from observation, a small percentage of learning, perhaps a mere 5%. ( Selinker, 1972, p.36)
Since the percentage of success is so small that it is a little bit disappointed for language learners and teachers. Some questions rise: “can language be taught?” and “do the learners learn what they are taught?” About this issue, Selinker referred that the second language learner who actually achieves native speaker competence, can not possibly have been taught this competence since linguists are daily –in almost every generative study –discovering new and fundamental facts about particular languages. Successful learners, in order to achieve this native- speaker competence, must have acquired these facts (and most probably important principles of language organization) without having explicitly been taught them.(Selinker, 1972, p.36) Chomsky also expresses a very similar view “……it must be recognized that one does not learn the grammatical structure of a second language through ‘explanation and instruction’ beyond the most elementary rudiments, for the simple reason that no one has enough explicit knowledge about this structure to provide explanation and instruction.”(qtd in Selinker, 1972, p.52) Therefore, Stern stated that “language teaching …….is teaching of the language, not teaching about the language”. (Stern, 1992)
For the learners,“it is not the case that the learners learn everything they are taught or that they eventually know only what they are taught.”(M. Lightbown &Nina Spada, 2002, p.169) Thus, A. Reber divided the learning pattern into two parts, one is implicit learning, which is a less conscious learning pattern with great potential; the other is explicit learning, which needs learner’s great consciousness.(qtd in Zhang jianlin & Mao jinping, 2004) What the learner gained mostly depends on these two learning patterns. Since the great potential of these two learning patterns, it gives the pedagogy experts a space to rethink, to explore a more suitable or available teaching method, that is implicit/ explicit teaching strategy which was raised by Stern.
2.Literature review
In the implicit / explicit field, there are three pairs of important conceptions which should be mentioned:implicit / explicit knowledge, implicit / explicit learning and implicit / explicit instruction. These three pairs are completed each other in second language acquisition. According to Bialystok, “she developed a model of second language learning including three knowledge sources which she labeled: other knowledge, explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge”. (qtd in Stern, 1992,p.332) For the implicit knowledge, “it is developed through exposure to communicative language use and is facilitated by the strategy of ‘functional practicing’, while explicit knowledge arises when learners focus on the language code, and is facilitated by ‘formal practicing’”.(Ellis, 1997,p.356) It is obvious that the explicit knowledge is about the language knowledge itself which can be explained explicitly, however, the implicit knowledge is about the performing competence of the language which the learners are not aware of holding it. To some extent, the knowledge is the product existing in the mind of the learners.
Implicit learning is defined as learning without awareness of what is being learned, and explicit learning is a more explicit process where various mnemonics, heuristics and strategies are employed to induce a representational system (qtd in Zhao yi, 2007, p.17). Up to now, it is necessary to distinguish two terms: learning refers to the process, while knowledge refers to the product. But for implicit / explicit instruction, what this term—instruction performs is to speed up this process to get the knowledge. About these two concepts of implicit/explicit instruction, there is no established terminology. But Stern referred them to this definition: “It is a key issue that in second language acquisition whether the learner should be taught to approach the learning task consciously as an intellectual exercise, or whether he should be encouraged to avoid thinking about the language and absorb it intuitively” (Stern, 1992,P. 327).The former is called explicit teaching while the latter is called implicit teaching. These two teachings represent two dimensions in second language teaching and learning. Stern (1992) proposed a contrastive account of the explicit-implicit teaching dimension with the following Figure 1:(see next page)
In this figure, it is obvious that explicit and implicit are two instructions including many strategies which construct a contrast between them. And it is quite clear about the definitions of these two instructions in general. From this figure, the features of explicit and implicit teachings are also quite clear, which offer a theoretical basis for the principles set in the present study.
Figure1 The explicit-implicit dimension in language teaching and learning strategies (Stern, 1992, p.327)
3.Reflections on SLA teaching from implicit/explicit learning theories
As above mentioned, the students do not learn all of what they are taught, and at the same time, they still do not only learn what they are taught. Some certain teaching method typically gives the students the opportunity to learn only a very restricted number of words and sentence types. But it does not mean that the students only know the restricted words and sentence. Sometimes they can use certain expression perfectly without any awareness, while sometimes something thought available in the input does not mean they will acquire it right away. Of course, there are many factors which affect the learner’s learning. From the perspective of implicit / explicit learning, it is clear that learner learns something consciously, others unconsciously. For the conscious learning, they get the explicit knowledge. For the unconscious learning, they get the language competence without awareness. Therefore, it is no doubt that the students do not only know what they are taught or know all of what they are taught since no one could master the explicit principles of the language totally. After knowing more about the learners’ learning pattern, it will provide the pedagogy experts some information which would encourage them to reflect on instruction in daily teaching. Thus, some methodologists raise their attention on implicit / explicit instruction, or in this field, such as: Stern (1992), Palmer (1922), Bloomfield (1933) etc.
3.1Re-conception of the role of instruction in SLA classroom
According to the introduction of three important conceptions on implicit / explicit dimension, it is clear that these three conceptions do not completely separate from each other. On the contrary, these three pairs are completed each other in second language acquisition. The brief relationship among them can be put into following diagram:
From the diagram, it is clear that the function of implicit/explicit instruction is to speed up this learning process continuously. Obviously, it makes a big challenge to the traditional conception of teacher’s role. Traditionally, in the classroom, the students expect their teacher to explain the language knowledge as explicit as possible and as much as possible (conclusion from a survey on good teacher figure). It is no wonder that the students have such requirements to the teacher since the thousands of years’ definition of teacher in China. From ancient China to now, we have the dimension that it seems that “the teacher must/should know everything”. This is what the students or the society expect. To some extent, it is the social identity of the teachers in China. However, theoretically speaking, according to Selinker, Chomsky and Stern, we know it is impossible for an English teacher to explain the language of English completely explicitly; even the linguists can not, either. It is just as Stern stated that: “language teaching is teaching of language, but not teaching about language knowledge.” (Stern, 1992, P.329) The techniques of implicit instruction encourage the learners to approach the new language globally and intuitively rather than through a process of conscious reflection and problem-solving so as to approach the native speaker competence as much as possible. The rational for an implicit instruction can be set as (a) language are much too complex to be fully describe; (b) even if the entire rule system could be described, it would be impossible to keep all the rules in mind an to rely on a consciously formulated system for effective learning(Stern, 1992, P.339). Thus, it is necessary for the instructors to put this teaching strategy into teaching practicing.
What the teacher’s main task is in the classroom is to guide the students to learn the language effectively, but not to be an explainer of the language knowledge. According to Vygotsky, the language learners have the “zone of proximal development (ZPD). For the teachers, he argued that “a teacher should be a ‘tram driver’, who organizes the social environment of learning.” (qtd in Lju Guk &David Kellogg, 2007). The teacher might do this by mediating a leaner task for a single learner or a group of learners, who then mediate the task for their classmates in group-work. It is clear that the role of a teacher in the classroom is a guider, not an explainer. What the teacher’s task is to organize or to guide learner to approach their ZPD so as to learn the language effectively. It is similar to Krashen’s “input hypothesis” which states that human acquires language in only one way by understanding messages or by receiving comprehensible input. The process of acquiring the language is from the current level i to i+1 (qtd in Mitchell & Myles, 1998, p. 126) which is beyond the current level of competence. Clearly, the teacher’s task is still to stimulate the learner’s potentiality to reach i+1. And in Krashen’s opinion, “speech is not taught directly, but ‘emerges’ on its own. Early speech is typically not grammatically accurate.” (Charles F. Leyba, 1994, p.57). Therefore, it is necessary for the learners to have a new conception of the teacher’s role in their process of language leaning. The function of the instructors is just to speed up the process, but could not to endow them with language competence.
3.2 Reflections on the ways of SLA teaching From the figure1 (above mentioned), it is obvious that we get a comparison between implicit/ explicit learning and teaching in general. Since the characteristics of implicit/ explicit dimension, it makes the implicit/ explicit instruction on the agenda. Some methodologists favor implicit instruction, such as Palmer (1922) and Bloomfield (1933), both of them emphasize habit formation in SLA, and favor the techniques of repetition, memorizing, imitation and automatization, while others prefer the explicit instruction. Advocates of an explicit teaching strategy assume that second language learning is, for many people, a cognitive process leading to an explicit knowledge of language (Stern, 1992,p.334). Such learners focus on the characteristic features of the language, and make an effort to acquire a conscious and conceptual knowledge of it. For them, they want to know how the language functions, how it hangs together, what words mean, how meaning is conveyed and so on. That is to say, an explicit teaching strategy encourages the students to look upon learning as an intellectually challenging and worthwhile task. On the other hand, advocates of implicit teaching strategy encourages learners to consider the language learning as a more active , less intellectual, more practical, and more readily accessible process.
According to Stern (1992), the techniques within the explicit instruction fall into two groups: metacognitive counseling techniques and guided cognitive learning strategies. Metacognitive counseling techniques bring together various acts of advice to learners during the course of instruction. Sometimes this advice consists of hints on what to do and what not to do in order to learn efficiently. On the other hand, guided cognitive learning strategies contain observation, conceptualization, explanation, mnemonic devices, rule discovery, relational thinking and so on. These techniques can be seen as aids in creating mental links in second language acquisition, which help learners to store information efficiently and retrieve data more easily.
Compared with explicit instruction, an implicit instruction encourages learners to approach the new language globally and intuitively rather than through a process of conscious reflection and problem-solving. According to Ellis, “underlying the whole question of the relationship between explicit and implicit knowledge and how they are internalized is the question of “consciousness” in language learning (Ellis, 1997, p.361). In the viewpoint of Stern (1992), the main points of an implicit instruction are considered as intuitiveness and automatization, which refer to help learners to learn a language intuitively and to get familiar with the language automatically. So according to Stern (1992), three types of implicit teaching techniques have involved: implicit audio-lingual techniques, experiential teaching techniques, and techniques for creating a state of receptiveness in the mind of the learners. Implicit audio-lingual techniques focus on the language but attempt to reduce the mental effort in coping with it. They have provided learners with useful ways of practicing language items without having to think hard. For example, if we want to teach the question pattern do you + verb as in “Do you know?”, the focus on lexical items such as see, understand, believe, diverts the learners attention from the question pattern, which is practiced automatically. The second type, experiential teaching techniques, from another aspect, shift the attention of learners away from the language altogether and direct it to topics, tasks, activities and substantive content. The third type is creating state of receptiveness, which aims at overcoming learners’ deeper psychological resistance to second language learning which is difficult to reach by pure rational approaches.
4.Conclusion
Through the introduction of three pairs of conceptions (implicit/ explicit knowledge, implicit/ explicit learning and implicit/ explicit instruction) in implicit/ explicit dimension, we know that they are completed with each other in the process of second language acquisition process. Since there the implicit/ explicit knowledge exist, it is quite rational for the teacher to introduce something explicitly, while others implicitly. No one could explain the language completely explicitly because the language is so complex. Thus, it is necessary for the students to have a new view of teacher and the teacher’s role in classroom. As above mentioned, some experts acknowledge that the knowledge of language can be taught, but the native speaker competence can not be taught. The language competence is a result of continuous process of implicit/ explicit learning which employ many techniques of implicit/ explicit learning.
Although many discussions above show that some methodologists favor either an explicit or an implicit approach, it is sure that there is no absolute boundary of these two approaches, they are not independently separated from each other. For example, for grammar teaching, Krashen argued that: “An overemphasis on conscious grammar has the undesirable result of encouraging over-use of the Monitor. But completely eliminating grammar robs our students of the chance to use conscious leaning as a supplement for acquisition” (Krashen &Terrell, qtd in Stern, 1992, p.331). Thus, in practice, it is wise to combine these two approaches together. And the mix will be varied according to the language topics, the course objectives, the characteristics of the students, and the needs of the teaching situation etc.
References:
[1]Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics. Vol. x13.
[2]Stern,H.H.(1992).Issues and options in language teaching. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
[3]Lightbown,p.& Spada,N.(2002).How language are learned. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
[4]Ellis,R. (1997). The study of second language acquisition.Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
[5]Lju Guk & David Kellogy. (2007). The ZPD and whole class teaching: Teacher-led and student-led interactional mediation of tasks. Language Teaching Research.
[6]Mitchell,R.& Myles, F. (1998).Second language learning theories. London: Aronld.