Act study

UNIVERSIDAD INDUSTRIAL DE SANTANDER
SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES-ELT PROGRAM
CLASSROOM RESEARCH METHODS
MAGDA JULIETTE AGUILERA SANCHEZ
ADRIANA CATALINA AVILA ARIZA

THE EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT GRAMMAR AND ITS ROLE

ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to study and analyze a survey that was made in a classroom conformed by eleven students in ages between eighteen to twenty four years old; they werestudents from different programs taking English classes in an institute, as a requirement to be graduated. During the development of this survey study two specific questions were going to be answered, the grammar role in adult students learning a L2 the preference of learners when studying grammar either in an implicit or explicit way, and the implications of using one or the other; knowing thatexplicit grammar is the most common teaching way in schools.
INTRODUCTION
On this paper it would be analyzed the results from a survey, in order to see the role of the grammar and the preferences in the way of learning students chose. According to the literature review some authors agree that the grammar teaching have to be explicit, like had been most of the time, however there are othersauthors whose criticizes this teaching and say that a implicit grammar could be a better way to teach, but some others approve both ways of teaching, they say that combining this two ways of learning could be the best option.
To make clear the results some pie charts will be used when analyzing the results shown by the survey. The outcomes and some conclusions are at end of this paper.
LITERATUREREVIEW
First of all it is important to say that the grammar role consists on involving students with a semantic structure in order to be able to communicate with all the skills, producing a good quality when writing or speaking, also understanding a reading or a listening. Being grammar a standard of communication it is important to have minimum ideas about some grammatical rules that can be usedas tools to make easy the interaction and communication with others, because although the fact of grammar been or not the most important when communication it is true that at least essential grammar is need.
Ellis (2008) defines implicit and explicit knowledge in the following way: "Implicit knowledge is intuitive, procedural, systematically variable, and automatic and thus available for usein fluent unplanned language use. It is not verbalizable”. According to some theorists, it is only learnable before learners reach a critical age (e.g. puberty). On the other hand Ellis defines that “Explicit knowledge is conscious, declarative, anomalous, and inconsistent (...) and is only accessible through controlled processing in planned language use. It is verbalizable, in which case itentails semi-technical or technical metalanguage. Like any type of factual knowledge, it is potentially learnable at any age”.
The previous paragraphs mean that people can learn things or in this case grammar in two different ways, the first one is explicit, which means that the teacher gives students the basic grammatical rules step by step explaining every concept. In other words, the teacher givespunctual concepts, rules and exceptions; at the end of this process the students are evaluated. Besides talking about implicit grammar, it refers to the learning by an unconscious and natural process which is learnt by experience and interactions with L2.
In a nutshell it can be said that according to some authors it is important and more efficiently to learn grammar in an implicit way, but someother argue that it is better explicitly. For example, according to Willis and Willis (2007), it is better to use the implicit grammar because they consider that learning is not just accumulating grammar rules and it is not memorizing by practicing, however learners have internal predetermined syllabuses that will help them to acquire the L2 when they are ready to do so, due to the fact that it...