Explicit and implicit knowledge and learning of an additional language – a research agenda

This paper puts forward a research agenda in the area of explicit and implicit knowledge and learning of second or additional languages. Based on a brief overview of reliable findings as well as open questions in the field, three agenda items are highlighted. First, valid and reliable measures of explicit and, in particular, implicit knowledge and learning need to be identified and their suitability for participants of different ages established. Second, and closely related to the previous point, explicit and implicit knowledge and learning should be investigated across the human lifespan. Therefore, studies need to include to a greater extent hitherto under-represented groups such as children and older adults in order to pinpoint the benefits or otherwise of implicit and, in particular, explicit knowledge and learning in these age ranges. Third, researchers should aim to capture with their designs the complex and dynamic interplay of the multiple cognitive, affective, biographical and contextual factors which influence the development of explicit and implicit knowledge over time. Concrete tasks for future research are proposed under these three agenda items, with a view to assisting interested investigators in formulating research questions and specifying research designs

Explicit Knowledge and Processes From a Usage-Based Perspective: The Developmental Trajectory of an Instructed L2 Learner

This article considers explicit knowledge and processes in second language (L2) learning from a usage-based theoretical perspective. It reports on the long-term development of a single instructed adult learner's use of two L2 constructions, the German Perfekt of gehen ("go," "walk") and fahren ("go by vehicle"), which was tracked over a period of more than 3 years. The results indicate that explicit knowledge and processes seemed to have a powerful impact on the participant's L2 learning and use, apparently enabling him to override the predicted bottom-up developmental path in certain circumstances and take a top-down approach instead. Specifically, it was found that the development of fahren was consistent with the predicted trajectory of moving from item-based to more schematic constructions. By contrast, the participant's use of gehen was characterized by schematic constructions almost from the beginning, suggesting a shortcut facilitated by explicit knowledge and processes. Both potential benefits and pitfalls associated with this alternative learning path are highlighted. The findings are explicated with reference to usage-based and complexity/dynamic-systems-theoretic concepts, thus offering an integration of explicit knowledge and processes in L2 learning and use into this particular theoretical framework

Esperanto as a tool in classroom foreign language learning in England

Previous work has examined the potential of Esperanto as a pedagogical tool in classroom foreign language learning in England, where limited language input of sometimes as little as one hour per week is the norm. The work reviewed here focuses on child learners aged 6 to 12 and was carried out between 2006 and 2016. Two Esperanto-based language awareness programmes have provided primarily descriptive insights, suggesting that learning Esperanto may result in greater metalinguistic awareness and more positive attitudes to other languages and cultures. However, the language awareness programmes were implemented without matched comparison groups and therefore could not reveal whether the learning of Esperanto would lead to different results than the learning of other languages. Classroom-based research that included matched comparison groups has sought to address this issue. Specifically, three studies investigated the questions of whether learning Esperanto as opposed to learning other languages would help enhance children’s metalinguistic awareness and thus contribute in turn to more successful learning in a limited-input classroom context. On the one hand, results indicate that for novice child learners, Esperanto was easier to learn than French, and that learning Esperanto may have a levelling effect that compensates for individual differences between children. On the other hand, the findings also show that these apparent advantages of Esperanto did not translate into measurably greater benefits for the development of metalinguistic awareness, or greater subsequent success in learning another foreign language. Moreover, learning Esperanto could not compensate for low language learning aptitude. In view of these sobering results, a number of proposals are made on how to take forward the research agenda. These proposals include further research into the potential benefits of using form-focused instruction (based on any language) with children as well as the effects of learning Esperanto in novice adult learners

Cultural effects rather than a bilingual advantage in cognition: A review and an empirical study.

The bilingual advantage hypothesis contends that the management of two languages in the brain is carried out through domain-general mechanisms, and that bilinguals possess a performance advantage over monolinguals on (non-linguistic) tasks that tap these processes. Presently, there is evidence both for and against such an advantage. Interestingly, the evidence in favor has been thought strongest in children and older adults, leading some researchers to argue that young adults might be at peak performance levels, and therefore bilingualism is unable to confer an improvement. We conducted a large-scale review of the extant literature and found that the weight of research pointed to an absence of positive evidence for a bilingual advantage at any age. We next gave a large number of young adult participants a task designed to test the bilingual advantage hypothesis. Reasoning from the literature that young adults from an East Asian (Korean) culture would likely outperform those from a Western (British) culture, we also compared participants on this factor. We found no evidence for a bilingual advantage, but did find evidence for enhanced performance in the Korean group. We interpret these results as further evidence against the bilingual advantage hypotheses.N/

Investigating explicit and implicit L2 knowledge and learning: Replications of Erlam (2005) and Roehr-Brackin & Tellier (2019)

This paper makes the case for close and approximate replications of Erlam (2005) and a conceptual replication of Roehr-Brackin & Tellier (2019). The two studies recommended for replication are informed by research on explicit and implicit knowledge, learning and teaching. They are ecologically valid classroom studies with either adolescent or child learners as participants and thus worked with as yet relatively underrepresented populations in the field of instructed second language acquisition. Erlam (2005) identified a levelling effect of a particular method of explicit instruction, while Roehr-Brackin & Tellier (2019) showed that language-analytic ability has a role to play even in younger children’s language learning. The researchers’ approaches duly reflect the need to take into account cognitive individual learner differences when working in intact classrooms. As the findings of each of the original studies have potentially profound implications for theory and practice in the field, replication is deemed both timely and desirable. In order to facilitate this endeavour, the key features of the original studies are summarised, and specific proposals on the methodological characteristics of suitable replication studies are put forward

Metalinguistic awareness in children with differing language learning experience

Theoretical research concerned with the notion of second language (L2) learning difficulty has resulted in specific criteria that can be used to predict the learning difficulty of different languages in terms of both explicit and implicit knowledge. The characteristics of the constructed language Esperanto suggest that this language has lower explicit and implicit learning difficulty than other languages. It may therefore be a suitable ?starter language? for child L2 learning in the classroom. Specifically, we propose that Esperanto may facilitate the development of metalinguistic awareness and, as a consequence, boost children?s budding capacity for explicit learning. This would be particularly advantageous in the minimal-input setting of the average foreign language classroom. We present findings from an empirical study which compared 11 to 12-year-old English-speaking children who had learned Esperanto and a European L2 (N = 35) with children who had learned various combinations of European and non-European L2s (N = 168) in terms of their performance on a measure of metalinguistic awareness. No significant differences in overall level of metalinguistic awareness were identified, but the Esperanto group significantly outperformed the comparison group on one of the eleven metalinguistic tasks included in the measure. Moreover, the Esperanto group displayed a more homogeneous performance than the other groups of children. This suggests that learning Esperanto may have a lasting levelling effect, reducing differences between children with varying metalinguistic abilities

Flexible egocentricity: Asymmetric switch costs on a perspective-taking task

We gave 40 participants a task in which they needed to select target objects from an array according to the instructions of either an informed director (who shared their perspective of the array) or an ignorant director (whose view of the array was restricted due to barriers). Importantly, sometimes only one of the directors was visible, and on some trials when both directors were present, participants were required to switch between perspectives. We found that participants were faster to select items from the informed director’s perspective than the ignorant director’s perspective, but that they slowed when there was a visible but inactive second director. Crucially, relative to nonswitch trials where the same perspective was taken twice consecutively, participants exhibited a significant cost of switching between perspectives when returning to take their own perspective, but not when switching to the other point of view. We interpret these results as evidence that participants inhibit their more salient perspective in order to adopt another’s, and then incur an asymmetric switch cost as a result. This suggests that although we are egocentric by default, our egocentricity is effectively, albeit temporarily, eliminated if we have just adopted an alternative frame of reference.This work was supported by an ESRC grant (ES/M008460/1) (SS & NSC; PI = NSC) and European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement No. 3399933 (SJ & NSC) awarded to NSC

Multilingual and monolingual children in the primary-level language classroom: individual differences and perceptions of foreign language learning

Existing research suggests that being multilingual may convey advantages for additional language learning. However, little research to date has examined the role of multiple languages in primary-school classroom settings and in foreign language learning in particular. We investigated the learning of French by children with English as an additional language (EAL) aged 8–9 in England. The EAL children and their monolingual peers were tested on their achievement in French, their metalinguistic awareness and associative memory. Their attitudes to languages and language learning were assessed. Two French classes were observed and teachers interviewed in order to document their approach to teaching French to a mixed-language class and their perceptions of the multilingual nature of the classroom. Our findings suggest that the EAL children’s multilingualism is not drawn upon as a potentially facilitative tool. English appears to be the only medium and the primary aim of instruction, with other languages assigned a subordinate role. The EAL children performed similarly to their monolingual peers on all measures, with level of English correlated with most measures. We argue that while an egalitarian treatment of all children is clearly desirable, it would be equally desirable to utilise the presence of other languages as a resource

Are individual differences in cognitive abilities and stylistic preferences related to multilingual adults’ performance in explicit learning conditions?

Research suggests that individual differences in additional language learning may play a more important role in taxing situations when learners are confronted with unfamiliar or difficult tasks. However, studies to date have mostly focused on second language (L2) learners/bilinguals, while individual differences within multilingual populations remain under-researched. Working with university-level multilingual adults, we compared the effectiveness of traditional instruction (familiar) and concept-based instruction (unfamiliar) to teach the past tense/aspect distinction in Spanish. Learners were pre- and post-tested on their knowledge of the target structure and assessed on language learning aptitude, working memory capacity, verbal-imagery cognitive style and attitudes. While both treatment groups demonstrated significantly improved metalinguistic knowledge, we found no statistical differences between the two groups in terms of knowledge gained or attitudes, and individual differences in cognitive ability were not associated with observed gains. This set of results indicates that the cognitive individual differences measured seemingly no longer played a significant role in these multilinguals’ performance in the instructional conditions examined. In addition, neither language learning experience nor typological closeness between known languages had any significant impact. We propose that extensive experience with explicit language instruction may have led to a levelling effect, as previously observed in L2 learners

The Role of Language-Analytic Ability in Children’s Instructed Second Language Learning

Language-analytic ability, or the ability to treat language as an object of analysis and arrive at linguistic generalizations, is at the core of the constructs of language learning aptitude and metalinguistic awareness, which are implicated in our ability to learn explicitly. In the context of child second language (L2) learning, it has been argued that children learn primarily implicitly and that the most important component of aptitude may be memory ability. However, no empirical research to date has investigated the relationship and development of aptitude and metalinguistic awareness longitudinally as well as examined their predictive power for children’s L2 achievement in the classroom. In a study with English-speaking learners aged 8-9 (N = 111), we found that although aptitude and metalinguistic awareness were (still) dynamic, they significantly predicted children’s achievement in L2 French. Moreover, language-analytic ability proved to be the component with the strongest predictive power. This finding suggests that it may not be level of cognitive maturity alone that determines children’s approach to L2 learning; experiencing explicit, form-focused instruction may foster the role of language-analytic ability even in children as young as 8-9 years