Explicit Instruction in Task-Based Language Teaching

Explicit Instruction in Task-Based Language Teaching Abstract How to teach grammar has always been a controversial topic in the history of second language acquisition. In recent years, the discussion has been focused on whether to use explicit or implicit way to teach grammar. The on-going trend of language teaching is to combine communicative skills and language forms together. But how to immerse the focus on form into communicative language teaching is still an unsolved problem. I joined a teaching experiment about explicit and implicit instruction when I was working in Michigan State University Confucius Institute. 40 American high school students were divided into two groups and each group were under explicit or†¦show more content†¦This position was supported by Carroll’s (1967) and Saegert’s (1974) studies which shows that the learners who study in a natural language environment have higher language ability than those who study under form-focused unnatural environment. Peter McCandless and Harris Winitz (1986) a lso compared the effects of meaning-oriented explicit instruction and traditional explicit instruction on the students’ ability to speak German. And it turned out that the students who received implicit instruction performed better on a speech-production task. And in another study by Winitz (1996), the students who were exposed to implicit instruction also performed better in judging sentences grammatical or ungrammatical than the students who were exposed to explicit instruction. 2 Explicit instruction Researchers who support explicit instruction (Thornbury, 1990; Scott Randall, 1992), however, hold that learning grammar rules on purpose can help learners use language effectively and correctly. They consider the target language as a knowledge system which could be mastered through instructors’ explanation and learners’ practice. In classroom teaching, explicit instruction usually applies the way of deduction, in which teachers introduce and explain the grammar rules on purpose; and then lead the students to practice in certain environment. Since the end of 1980s, researchers found thatShow MoreRelatedThe Effect Of Recasts And Prompts On Francophone Learners944 Words   |  4 Pagespractices, learners would be given either recasts or prompts to errors regarding his and her, or no CF in the control group. Participants were assessed three times: pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-test. The researchers discovered that instruction and exposure plus CF are more effective than those without CF. No technique is better than the other since prompts are more effective than recasts for lower-proficiency students while high-proficiency students benefit from both equally. 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