Abstract
From a theoretical point of view in second language learning, it is crucial to understand the importance of explicit knowledge and learning when teaching adolescents and adults to develop automatization of abstract grammatical structures. Dekeyser (2008) acknowledges this idea, claiming that “the instructional approach should be different depending on age: full-scale immersion is necessary for children to capitalize on their implicit learning skills, and formal rule teaching is necessary for adolescents and adults to draw on their explicit learning skills” (p.335). This important distinction is made due to the different cognitive skills children and adults have developed through aging, making the former better at implicit learning and the latter at explicit learning (Batterink and Neville, 2013). However, although Dekeyser clearly states the importance of developing explicit grammar knowledge among students (2008), his research has not suggested a clear methodology to work with this type of knowledge. Therefore, this qualitative research study was developed to apply a linguistic and neurocognitive-based pedagogical intervention as an extension of the presentation stage in the presentation-practice-production teaching model in order to help adult students develop explicit grammar knowledge. The intervention consists of different teaching activities that take into consideration adults’ various linguistic and neurocognitive needs. Such activities were applied in order to help students develop the three main aspects of explicit grammar knowledge: analogical reasoning, noticing grammatical patterns, and noticing mistakes and providing pedagogical explanations on them.
Author Information
Diego Monasterio, Bernardo O'Higgins University, Chile
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