The role and effect of explicit grammar instruction in SLA

Abstract

The aim of this project was to analyze the role and effect of explicit grammar instruction that is focus on form, in L2 learning, especially in nonnaturalistic settings where learners are hardly exposed to the L2 outside school. First, the students participated in an oral interview. Secondly, they had to identify the correct sentence they had previously produced in the oral interview in student-specific tests, which offered ten pairs of sentences. Each pair had a correct sentence and an incorrect option added by the researcher. Third, they analyzed their choices by providing explicit or implicit explanations. The majority of students were able to choose the correct sentence and explain their correct choice in the student-specific tests. Students preferred to explain most of the structures through explicit knowledge. Implicit knowledge was only used when the technical terms to explain the phenomenon lacked. The study showed that previous explicit grammar instruction could contribute in some way to SLA