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IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT GRAMMAR:
AN EMPIRICAL STUDY
PETER S.GREEN and KARLHEINZ HECT
Univeristy of York

University of Munich

The Language teaching controversy, Diller 1978 claimed that teachers lost their conviction
about the value of grammar teaching while they are objectively teaching langauge in school
have become more communicative and its content more practical, also the codecomunication dilemma, Stern 1983 and Aqcuisition vs learning, Krashen 1981 claimed
that considered by teachers, if at all, debating between theoriticians remote from classroom
practically. Teachers mostly talking about the parity between accuracy and fluency, and if
there has been some alteration in the instruction of continuity, it is maybe less atributy
theoritical consideration than expansion of language teaching, range widely of ability, where
to cognitive an approach proved inappropriate.
This is not to criticize language teachers for not keeping a line of developments. Hesitancy of
new theories is probably a sound conviction, since applying linguists are unable to agree on
how acquisition of languages. Claimeed by Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) direct teaching
has little effect on the learners built-in syllabus. Felix (1987:419) stated that langauges can
definitely be learnt, but they cannot only speaking, be tought). Peoples would agree with Ellis
(1985:229) claimed that to disprove that instruction can help learners to obtain a L2 is not
only counterintuitive, but contradiction to the personal experience of uncountoble teachers
and students. There is definitely no general aid for the position adopted by Krashen, that
aware learning is only available as a monitor(1981:4) to modify an reveal after it has been
started by the unconscious acquired system (cf.Hulstijn and Hulstijn 1984; Sorace 1985;
Faech 1986; Rutherford 1987; Mclaughlin 1988). The cognitive psychology distinctions
between declarative knowledge (knowing that) and procedural knowledge (knowing how)
(Anderson 1980) lies at the basis of a great of discussion of the mental grammar, cf, for
example Bialystok(1979) and Fraech (1986) on implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge;
Bialystok(1982) on the relationship between knowing and using linguistic forms, Faech and

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Kasper (1984) on rules and procedures, and Bialystok and Sharwood Smith (1985) on the
learners linguistic knowledge and controlling knowledge in real-time language processing.
Formal grammar teaching and learning. Perharps contented a human drive to determine order
on the apparent in total confusion of natural language. Given that teachers seem to want to
give, and learners to be given, formal instruction in L2, the question of whether it helping
perhaps not the only one that should be asked. It is important also to know how good learners
learn the rules that teachers teach, if they learn some better than others, whether they confess
when to use them and how successful they are in applying them. The aim of thi article is to
go after some answers to these questions.
BACKGROUND
Since 1979, the iniversities of Munich and York, the language-teacher-training departments
have arouse a joint unit of learner language. The learners are school students in French,
German, Hungarian, Italian, and Swedish secondary school at beginners, intermediate, and
advanced levels. The unit pervode currently of over 5,000 specimen of performance in
English as a foeign language, on oral and written communicative tasks and grammar and
vocabulary test. Native language samples, producd by peer groups in English schools
perfrming the some tasks.
The data have been analysed from different point of view. The first paper (Hecth and Green
1989b) look for the grammatical competence and performance the focus was on the
transmission of meaning. It was found during the learners had achieved a good level of
qualification, there was a sharp fall-off from competence to performance. A comparable
group of native speakers, on the other hand, showed only a slighted fall-off. Paraprhasing
from Ellis (1985:197), the native speakers were much better at the native competence thn
the learnes.
Arguing with Krashen, that the learners had alterntive to two diverge grammatical system in
the two of tasks. Performing task, where the focus was on content, they might be supposed to
have drawn largerly on implicit grammar, whilst in the qualification task, where their
attention was drawn to form, they may have monitored their production and corrected it
where obligatory with the help of learned (explicit) ruled by Krashen 1981. That argument
would have remaining purely speculative, since the qualification task did not ask for any
rules to be expressed. However, the syllabus the learners were followed and used by text

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books make it clear that they had been taught explicit arregements for all the areas of
grammar that the two types of task called upon. In the task focusing on form, therefore, the
learners might well have point toward to explicit arregements, either to rpoduce or to check
the answers they gave.
If that was the case and the learners were indeed bringing concious arregements into play
then it would be interesting to take a look at the arregements, themselves, and not just the
product of them, asked learners to make explicit the arregements they were using or at least
thought they were using.

THE INVESTIGATION
A test devising in which the testees were shown twelve errors and asked to offer explanations
or rules that would enable someone making those errors to understand and correct them.they
were also askeed themselves providing correct versions. The errors were chosen according to
two criteria. Firstly, they were errors had occurred repeatedly in two earlier communicative
tasks-a letter to a pen-friend and an oral report of an incident. Secondly, they were infractions
of rules that had been taught as part of the syllabus of all the learners who committed them.
The errors were provided with sufficient context to ensure that competent speakers of English
would be in no doubt about the correct version and underlined so that the testees should not
modify with error-free portions of the text.
The test had given 300 German Learners of English and 50 native English students.the
German learners had had from three to twelve years of exposure to formal teaching of
English as a foreign language. They were particularly school pupils but a group of university
students of English was included. At the intermediate levels, all three school types of the
triparte German secondary school system were represented-Gymnasium, Realschule, and
Hauptschule. The English students were comparable in age to the intermediate-level German
students and were drawn from a comprehensive school and an independent school.
ASSUMPTIONS AND EXPECTATIONS
When teachers teach learners formally the grammar of a foreign language, and when learners
ask to be taught it, they are making definite assumptions, even if they do not necessarily
make them explicit.

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The basic assumption is that it will help the learners to get the language right. Fluency may
well, and probably does, come from elsewhere-from some form of practice, no doubt. But if
learners are to get beyond the category that Randall Jones called fluent but lousy, it is felt
they will need to formalize the regularities of the language.
Furthermore assumed that the complex mechanisms of language can be reduced to learnable
formulae with identifiable spheres of application. However the capability to understand
such rules is probably felt to be linked to the degree of cognitive sophistication of learners.
If these assumptions are justifying, the lead to certai expectations about how learners should
perform on our test.
1. Since the rules applicable to our errors are commonly taught, they might be expected
also to have been learnt, at least by a majority of learners.
2. They should have been learnt better by the more able learners and, possibly, also by
the more experienced.
3. If learners have a viable rule available, they should be able to produce a correct
correction.
4. Conversely, if they do not have a viable rule, they should largerly be unable to
produce a correct correction.
5. As some rules are more straightforward than others, the success rate of individual
rules should vary.
6. Native speakers, if they are taught rules at all about their language, are taught rules of
a fundamentally different kind from those taught to foreign language learners. They
should therefore have a lower success rate than the German learners in formulating
correct rules.
7. On the other hands, native speakers should be able to correct all the errors
independently of whether they can supply rules for the corrections.
RESULT
Table 3 shows the success rate achieved for arregements and corrections. Item by item and
group by group. Perharps the first thing to notice about the results is the performance of the
English students in correcting the errors. In 96 per cent of the possible cases they produced
the correction anticipated. Those cases where they did not were largely omisssions, either
through oversight or because they felt there was no error to correct . only very rare did they
produce a non-anticipated correction. Thus, even though contextually of some of the errors is

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of necessity not exhaustively defined, a standard correction for each item neverthless seems
suggesting itself to native speakers. To that extent at least, the test appears to have validity.
The German learners, as might be expected, become better at error correction as their
experience improves. For the Gymnasium students, the overall success rate is 79 per cent for
young learners, 92 per cent for middle, and 95 per cent for advanced. The largely exGymnasium university studetns achieving 97 per cent. At the intermediate level, students in
the more academic school types are more succesful than their peers in less academic schools.
As a whole group, the German learners achieving 78 per cent of the possible corrections-an
impressively high figure. How, then, does their performance on rules match up to our
expetations?