Alexandra was a guest in Stockholm on 24 May for our Higher Seminar in Language Education at the Department of Teaching and Learning at Stockholm University, speaking on Implicit and explicit knowledge development among young EFL learners. She has allowed us to share a video of that presentation here. On this page we have a transcript of Alexandra’s seminar:
Alexandra Schurz: implicit and explicit knowledge development among young EFL learners
[00:00:00] Okay. Hello everybody. And welcome to my presentation. My name is Alexander Schwartz and I’m a PhD student at the university of Vienna. And first of all, thank you very much for welcoming me for having me here at the university of Stockholm or a Stockholm university, actually. Right. I’m very happy to be here and to have the opportunity to share one aspect of my PhD thesis.
[00:00:27] So the topic of my presentation is implicit and explicit knowledge development among young EFL learners. And in this presentation, I’m first going to draw your attention to my research interest and to why I think my topic is of relevance. And then this will bring me to the methods that I applied.
[00:00:46] And finally I’ll spend most of the time talking about the findings and implications.
[00:00:51] So little in the field of second language acquisition has been as controversial as the role of grammar in instruction. And I also [00:01:00] noticed this at different conference presentations, when people in the audience asked me, well, why do you focus on grammar? Why don’t you focus on any other language area?
[00:01:12] So we do know that grammar knowledge does form part of communicative competence. And it does so, especially if we conceptualize grammar knowledge in terms of implicit or automatized knowledge. And this brings me to a key distinction that I make in my dissertation, the one of explicit and implicit knowledge, explicit knowledge entails
[00:01:36] awareness of grammatical structures, which is not the case in implicit knowledge and implicit knowledge is basically intuitive knowledge we also primarily draw on in our first language, which means that it’s accessed rapidly and easily. Whereas on the other hand, explicit knowledge is accessed slowly and effortfully, unless it has been [00:02:00] automatized.
[00:02:01] And this has been referred to as automatized knowledge which therefore also entails the learners awareness of grammatical structures. And it’s accessed rapidly like implicit knowledge and. It follows that implicit and automatized knowledge. They are functionally equivalent and they’re both equally desirable in language teaching and learning and applying a, or adopting a, an applied pedagogic perspective, which I’m doing in my thesis.
[00:02:33] I refer to the combination of those two constructs as automatized, implicit knowledge.
[00:02:41] Now, what do we know about how. Implicit explicit and automatized knowledge is being constructed. The research has been mainly laboratory based and the research showed that explicit or any conditions seem to be more conducive to learning, but those studies [00:03:00] mostly implemented outcome measures only in terms of how that tapped into explicit knowledge and few studies integrated outcome measures, tapping into automatized or implicit knowledge, which is of course problematic.
[00:03:13] And at the same time in laboratory settings, implicit learning conditions can not be as extensive as they might be in real life. So I then wondered at the beginning of my PhD, what is the impact of learners spare time use of English? So if we conceptualize this as an implicit learning condition, what is the impact of automatized on automatized and implicit knowledge?
[00:03:40] So I draw on Pia Sundqvist’s term extramural English, which is the English learners come in contact with, or are involved in outside the walls of the classroom.
[00:03:52] And there has been some research on grammar acquisition through extramural English, but it’s limited, but still we [00:04:00] do know that grammar learning through extramural, English is possible, especially if exposure is expensive. And if grammatical features occur frequently in the input and likely also if grammatical features are salient in the input, however, there has to my knowledge not been any research done on
[00:04:21] the effect of extra mural English on implicit and automatized knowledge. So this is what my research aim is, my research agenda. So what is the impact of extramural English, and of instruction on learning as automatized, implicit and explicit knowledge. And so once again, why is this important?
[00:04:40] Well if extramural English provides, a learning environment that is enjoyable and pressure-free and if grammar can be learned in this way, then we should, of course exploit it and research and, and investigate this in research. [00:05:00] So I selected two research questions for this presentation. The first one being, how do tests of automatized implicit and explicit knowledge performed by Austrian and Swedish, lower secondary EFL learners load in a factor analysis.
[00:05:16] And if you’re not so familiar with factor analysis, the the statistical method, I’m going to explain it in some more detail later on. And then the other research question is what is the role of extra mural English and instruction in automatized implicit and explicit knowledge of those learners.
[00:05:39] And this brings me to the research context. So as you’ve seen based on those two research questions, I compared Austrian and Swedish learners. Now, why is that? Why did I choose those two environments or countries? Well, they differ according to a number of aspects. Most importantly [00:06:00] Austria is a so-called dubbing country.
[00:06:02] So foreign-language media is mostly dubbed, whereas in Sweden it’s, as you probably know, mostly subtitled. And so based on the data that I also gathered for my PhD, but this is not the focus in this presentation, learners at the age of 13 to 14 years, use English. On a weekly basis for about 17 hours, based on the median in Austria, compared to 27 hours in Sweden. And this comprises activities such as listening to music, listening to other audio, watching audio visuals, reading, speaking, writing, and gaming.
[00:06:45] When it comes to ELTS English language, teaching in lower secondary the type of instruction appears to be more explicit and more systematic in Austria than in Sweden. In Sweden instruction appears to be more implicit, fluency [00:07:00] based and incidental. And now why is that? Well, this actually seems to be linked to the school system.
[00:07:06] So in Austria, the school system is more selective. So, after four years of primary school in Austria students either go to middle school or to academic high school. And academic high school is selective and admission depends on primary school grades. And there is also more grade retention according to OACD data than in then in Swedish lower secondary school. In Sweden, there’s a comprehensive school system up to year nine and less grade retention (students repeating a school year) than in Austria.
[00:07:46] And now to sum this up, Austria therefore seems to be more explicit learning conditions. And Sweden appears to provide more implicit learning conditions which makes the comparison [00:08:00] quite [hard]. All right. So to give you an overview of the test instruments that I used in my PhD: first of all, a student questionnaire that contained questions on the learners’ extra-mural English use and on the type of instruction that they received. that I also included a teacher questionnaire and interview
[00:08:22] with the items on the type of instruction and also inquiring into learners’ extra mural English use and what extent this seems to impact learners’ acquisition and grammar and learning in particular. And then when it comes to the grammar tests of automatized implicit and explicit knowledge, the test of automatized implicit knowledge, basically what brings them together is that they all impose a time constraint on learners.
[00:08:47] So, the tests are performed under a time constraint conditions, which should elicit or tap into learn as automatized, linguistic knowledge which is however, not the case in the explicit [00:09:00] knowledge tests. So there learners are not under time pressure. I’m going to talk about those different grammar tests in a bit more detail later on, but for now this is to provide an overview.
[00:09:13] And this brings me to data collection. So I collected data with those different instruments in 2019. I started data collection in Sweden in November, 2019. And I was collecting data for about three or four months until COVID hit us. I was planning on collecting even more data, but yeah, I I’m happy that I could do most of the data collection before
[00:09:40] COVID so in total, I have 213 participants that I could take into account in my study but I will talk about that later. So the school types types that I, that are part of my study are middle schools and academic high schools in Austria. So [00:10:00] two schools from each school type and four comprehensive schools in Sweden, and the number of students is comparable in each of the two countries,
[00:10:08] so about 100 in each country. The age is also comparable: 14 years in Austria, but students were a bit younger in Sweden, 13.6 years, based on the mean. And I also ask the learners, current English teachers in questionnaires and in interviews about the type of instruction, as I said earlier. So six teachers in Austria and nine teachers in Sweden.
[00:10:37] All right. And now as I said I would talk a bit more about some of the tests, instruments, and mainly the ones that are of interest to the research questions that I’ve read out to you earlier on. So first of all the student questionnaire and the items on extra mural English, that’s have a look at that.
[00:10:59] So this [00:11:00] is based, the questionnaire is based on Andreas Bengtsson’s PhD, that is forthcoming. And basically there are eight main, extra mural English categories. So speaking, listening, gaming, writing, reading, singing, watching, and listening to music. Those are the main categories. And for each of those EE activities, I ask learners, first of all, to what extent they actually use those activities in English on a regular basis.
[00:11:30] So do you use it not at all or, or regularly or very frequently. So these items were based on five point Likert scales. The next step was sent to ask them, well, if you regularly use this activity in your spare time and use English while doing so, when did you start engaging in this activity?
[00:11:52] So I asked them about the starting age, and finally I asked them about the weekly hours and minutes that they dedicated to the given activity. [00:12:00] And here I referred to the previous week. So how much time did you spend on this activity last week? In this outer circle, you can also see subcategories, which were also part of the questionnaire, but those are not of interest to this presentation.
[00:12:18] And I actually did not really do any further analysis based on the sub categories because I had too few participants for those different sub categories. Alright, now let’s turn to the grammar tests and in order to do so, it’s quite important to know which grammatical structures were in those tests. So I selected these grammatical structures.
[00:12:45] And the selection of the structures was based on the problematicity of the structures for the two target groups. Also I wanted to make sure that these are features that frequently occur in a formal language use. [00:13:00] Those are features that are also easily integrated into tests, so practicality should be given and so on.
[00:13:09] So there were a number of features that I took into account and number of factors, our selection criteria. So the first test is the oral narrative test and this is a measure of automatized implicit knowledge. For this test, I designed two short videos. And in each video the structures reoccurred repeatedly, so students would watch this video or each of the videos twice. And then the third time they would watch the video, but the sound was turned off, so that they would only see the the visuals. Yeah. And they themselves had to tell the story and this should elicit the target features. So I can show you an extract from one of the videos. Let’s see the sound works.
[00:13:53] The story of Alice and Luke. 10 years ago, [00:14:00] Alice lived by herself in a small apartment in New York.
[00:14:04] One evening, she walked over to the bar next door. She started talking to Luke who asked her out for drinks. Alice was totally interested in him. That is how their story began, but they did not have the same interests.
[00:14:24] Okay. And it continues like this. I hope that in the recording, I think, and people in zoom were able to hear it.
[00:14:31] In the room was probably a bit harder. But at least you saw the visuals. So here you could see that here, for instance, I tried to elicit negated did, so it did not have the same interests. This is what I tried to elicit by means of those additional and texts, cues, and visual cues. Okay. So this was the oral narrative test.
[00:14:53] The oral narrative test was then transcribed. So this was a performance of one student. [00:15:00] And so I had up to 120 codes per person, and this was a lot of work yeah. Coding those different instances for correct and incorrect productions of the different target structures for all those obligatory occasions.
[00:15:22] The other test of automatized implicit knowledge was the elicited imitation test. Basically students were presented with a number of, I think, 40 in total 40 items, some of them were grammatical, others ungrammatical. And for each item, they first listened to it. Then they had to respond to a comprehension question in order to have them focus on meaning.
[00:15:45] And then in the end, students were asked to repeat, the sentence and to say it in correct English. And this was voice recorded. And here students were under time pressure. So they only had I think, seven seconds to reproduce the sentence. To give you an [00:16:00] example of present progressive of a grammatical item: Right now, my classmates are waiting for the next break.
[00:16:10] Right now, my classmates are waiting for the next break and this one:
[00:16:16] I wonder where Tom is. Oh, he sits by the lake. I wonder where Tom is. Oh, he sits by the lake. So this is an ungrammatical item. It should be he is sitting by the lake and this is what students were supposed to say then, and this was recorded.
[00:16:33] Okay. So this was the elicited imitation test. And so for those two measures, those two oral measures where students actually had to speak and where this and where their performance is voice recorded, I took out students in pairs from their ongoing classes, and I was in a separate room with them because I had to watch over them to check whether everything worked out and whether they [00:17:00] understood what was going on and so on. So I did this in pairs with the students and the rooms really differed, so they, range from group rooms to a school kitchen, a room for a mediation. And then this was the smallest room, kind of like where we’re in the room with the IT person where students sat opposite each other performing two different tests, which is classroom-based research and where you just have to adapt and go with, the conditions. Okay, so this is now the last test of automatized implicit knowledge, a timed grammaticallity judgment test. Here students did not have to speak. This was merely a receptive test, split into two parts a written and an oral timed grammaticality judgment test. In the written test,
[00:17:56] they had to listen a sentence at a time and then [00:18:00] make very quick grammaticality judgment to indicate whether this item is grammatical or not. Same thing for the oral tests, but here students listen to the items: Did you enjoy your last summer break? Did you enjoy your last summer break? Okay. And so I administered this test on SoSci surveys,
[00:18:22] so online, and students did this on their computer and their reaction time was measured in milliseconds. And yeah, this was used as well for the evaluation. You can ask me if you have any questions, I’m not going to go into even more details for now. Okay. And now let’s move on to the explicit measures.
[00:18:44] And remember here, students were not under time pressure. So students had like a fair amount of time to perform those tests. The untimed grammaticality judgment test is a test where students had to make grammatic judgements as well. And in [00:19:00] addition, if they rated or indicated the sentence is incorrect. ungrammatical,
[00:19:05] then they also had to provide the correct form. And this was then rated as correct, if students were also able to actually provide the correct foem. In the metalinguistic knowledge test, students, for instance, in this first part had to underline examples of different grammatical structures and the grammatical structures were indicated based on meta language.
[00:19:32] So for instance, for present progressive they had to underline our line. Yes. And then the second part was a single choice. Section. So for each sentence, which was always incorrect or ungrammatical students had to select the grammatical rule that best explained the era. And this test was very difficult for Swedish [00:20:00] student.
[00:20:03] Okay, so let’s turn fully turn to the findings and before doing so I would like to once again, have a look at the research questions, research question one as a reminder. So that was how did test of implicit and explicit knowledge performed by Austrian and Swedish lower secondary learners load in a factor analysis.
[00:20:22] Now, what is a factor analysis? Well, in the factor analysis, we can learn about the structure of different variables so we can see or check whether different variables, in my case, different grammar tests, tap into different constructs, or if they all load in one factor and only measure one type of grammar knowledge.
[00:20:45] So. This is why I use factor analysis. And this was especially important because those different grammar tests they have previously to my knowledge, only been used with adult learners and with learners in a more traditional, EFL settings, so where [00:21:00] implicit learning conditions were not as dominant as it is the case in Sweden, which makes this an important study. So the hypothesis was then as based on previous research, that I would find two factors of automatized implicit and explicit knowledge. Okay. So first of all, descriptives you don’t, you’re not supposed to know by heart now what those acronyms refer to. It’s important to know that the first four measures referred to automatized implicit knowledge, or at least they were intended to tap into automatized implicit knowledge, and the maximum score was 100% or one. And interestingly, the true group scored equally high or low on the measures of automatized implicit knowledge, right? This is where we can see here for the first four measures, but then when it comes to [00:22:00] the other two measures of explicit knowledge, the groups differ quite clearly. And it’s very likely, or, yeah, it’s very likely that for the Austrian group, the Austrian group seems to have more explicit knowledge because of the more explicit type of instruction. But let’s have a look now at the factor analysis. So I computed a factor analysis separately for each sample for each country.
[00:22:28] And now let’s have a look at the, visual first. So this is Austria. The best factor solution based on a number of parameters. So the best factor solution for Austria was indeed a two factor solution as expected. So nothing surprising here. I got the two factors for automatized implicit and explicit knowledge as expected.
[00:22:53] However, for the Swedish sample, I only got one factor. So the best factor solution was [00:23:00] one factor, all tests loaded on the same factor. Okay. So that was very surprising. wait, I am, and So it seems to be the case in Sweden that the learners performed or tried to perform all tests based on automatized implicit knowledge.
[00:23:22] So, the untimed grammaticality judgment test. Which is of course possible because if you have automatized knowledge, then you can, of course, use it to perform an untimed test. And in the Swedish sample, those two measures of explicit knowledge were also less strongly related than was the case in Austria.
[00:23:45] And we can compare this to Muñoz & Cadierno, who performed these two tests, these two explicit measures, on a Danish student sample and on a Spanish student samples, Spain being more similar to [00:24:00] Austria in terms of its more traditional EFL setting and Denmark being more similar to Sweden. And they also found that
[00:24:07] measures of explicit knowledge were less strongly related in the Danish sample than in the Spanish sample, which points towards the untimed grammaticality judgement test tapping into automatized implicit knowledge in the Danish and in the Swedish sample.
[00:24:28] Okay, now let’s turn to the other research questions. So what is the role of instruction and extra mural English in learners’ automatized implicit and explicit knowledge. Hypotheses were that first of all, explicit knowledge is predicted by explicit instructions while we know that from previous research.
[00:24:48] And the second hypothesis was that automatized implicit knowledge can be predicted by extensive, extra mural English, but also by instruction that integrates communicative [00:25:00] practice.
[00:25:05] So let’s have a look at learners’ use of extra mural English before turning to the models that I computed for this research question. So if you remember, when talking about the research context, I already said that there SI there was more XML English in Sweden. And this contained all those variables here, all those different types of activities, but here we can have a look at those different activities separately.
[00:25:32] And we can see that yes, in Sweden, there seems to be more extra mural English use, but also the difference is most striking in terms of watching and gaming. Yeah. Likely because, well, we have the subtitling practices in Sweden and when it comes to gaming the speech community’s just larger, if you can say that in, in Austria, because German is spoken by more [00:26:00] people, whereas in Sweden, students would necessarily have to interact maybe to some extent with speakers of other languages on the internet.
[00:26:09] yes. Okay. And now, to assess the impact of extra English on those different types of. knowledge, I ran linear mixed models in R, in the statistical software R studio, the dependent variables were the six test scores and the independent variables were extra mural English country and some control variables such as gender, age, dyslexia, and socioeconomic status.
[00:26:39] Okay. First finding a weekly hours of extra mural English. So the total use of extra mural English, but excluding music because I hypothesised that music probably does not have a significant impact on, learners’ grammar knowledge because it’s done rather passively, engaged in rather passively.
[00:26:59] So this [00:27:00] total score of weekly hours of extra mural English had a significant impact in the Swedish sample on the measures of automatized implicit knowledge. So on the measures that in the Swedish sample seem to tap into automatized implicit knowledge. However, in the Austrian sample, I did not find a significant impact of extra mural English, which is interesting.
[00:27:23] We can see that here in the visual. So Sweden in orange, where we can always find or see a more positive development or relationship between extra mural English, the hours of extra mural English and the grammar test score. Whereas in Austria, the relationship is more neutral or even negative.
[00:27:48] Okay. Let’s continue. Let’s now have a look at individual extra mural English activities, remember, like reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, or [00:28:00] watching gaming, singing. And so here, the viewing and gaming seemed to have the most consistent, positive effect on learner’s automatized implicit knowledge, but again, only in Sweden.
[00:28:14] So in Austria, again, I could not find any significant positive relationships between learners extra mural English use and grammar knowledge. So viewing and gaming seem to be very effective, according to my data. On the other hand, singing and listening to music appear to be the least effective. And then all the other activities are reading, writing, speaking where somewhere in between. It’s of course likely that my models could most easily detect that positive effect of viewing and gaming, because those were also the activities that are most common.
[00:28:53] So this has to be considered when interpreting the models. yeah, [00:29:00] Again, the visuals, I mean, nothing surprising just to show you once again, that in Sweden, the development or the lines are positive and in Austria, the blue line neutral or negative, and the same for gaming.
[00:29:19] Okay. All right. So I already told you that viewing and gaming emerged as the most positive having the most positive effect on learners’ grammar knowledge. Possible explanations, all those multimodal activities, so they’re going to have this visual support, and in addition, language, reception and production, like in gaming, when there is also interaction with co gamers happens under a time constraint conditions, which is of course what my measures of automatized implicit knowledge also like yeah, they also impose a time constraint on learners.
[00:29:56] But as I said, viewing and gaming are also those extra [00:30:00] mural English activities that seem, or that occurred most frequently in the samples, which might be also why the models were able to detect significant findings here, but not for other activities that are less common. Or less extensively engaged in. And in order to dig deeper, let’s have a look at teacher interview data because yeah, this is quite revelatory.
[00:30:32] So all six Swedish teachers believe that extra mural English aids grammar acquisition and they were quite precise in a way, or they were they seemed to have quite a nuanced understanding of to what extent grammar is being acquired extramurally. So they said it’s possible at least for certain features and up to a certain point, for instance, the Swedish teacher that I called [00:31:00] Sara claimed or suggested grammar acquition through extra mural English can work to a certain level.
[00:31:07] And then one could start learning the rules. Like, why should I say this and why not that? But I think you can learn it quite well. Like for example, with irregular verbs. And so teachers in a way seemed to rely on learners’ implicit encounters with grammatical structures in their spare time. And explicit instruction comes somewhat later compared to the Austrian setting.
[00:31:34] So Karin also in Sweden said letting them, so the students speak and when they have reached a certain language level, this is when grammar becomes interesting, because this is when they realize that there has to be a rule. So the teachers seem to kind of wait until students appear to be a bit more receptive to explicit instruction.
[00:31:57] What about Austria then? So [00:32:00] why couldn’t I find a significant impact of extra mural English? Let’s have a look at interview data. So the Austrian middle school teachers saw extra mural English as rather ineffective for grammar learning and for language learning in general, Lucas. So the teacher, the thing is some of the students do use English in their spare time, but solely for video gaming on the internet via TeamSpeak.
[00:32:24] But mostly it is those students who are rather weak. And although they do tell me that they have used English in this video time, they also say that they didn’t understand the others, co-players or co-gamers and that the others didn’t understand them. So does that mean it doesn’t really help them? Of course not.
[00:32:42] Because when you work on TeamSpeak with other gamers, that’s, it’s about very fast reactions not only in playing, but also in speaking. And for that, they’re not experienced enough with the language. And at first, when looking at the data, I was a bit like, well, maybe the teachers [00:33:00] just don’t see the benefits in the learners’ development, but it is very likely that since in the Austrian samples, students only very recently started engaging in those different activities in their spare time that they were not experienced enough using the language in such a context. Whereas in the Swedish sample, there I found the average starting age to be nine or 10 years. In Austria it was more like 12 or 13.
[00:33:30] For those learners who do use English back. And so. The problem, so to say, in the Austrian sample could be the higher starting age of actual English. So perhaps if I went back to those to those schools and tested the students again, perhaps in the Austrian sample, those effects would be more visible now or not because learners started engaging in those activities after the critical period.
[00:33:57] So at a time when perhaps they [00:34:00] are not able to learn grammar implicitly to the same extent as they have been previously, or they would have been previously.
[00:34:13] Okay. And then also in the Austrian sample where actual English is less extensive. I mean, less extensive, yes, but also it’s still on the rise. So we have to see both sides. So if so if extra mural English is less extensive, its effect on grammar can not be as strong, but also the effect on grammar cannot be detected as easily by the statistical models, which has to be considered as well.
[00:34:40] Because in the Austrian interview data, especially when talking to academic high school teachers it did emerge that individual learners who use extra mural English extensively that they do seem to learn grammar this way. So Julia the teacher said about one student that the student [00:35:00] writes in English in such a way, you know, structures that we haven’t learned, but that she just it’s just so native-like, so there are individual learners in the Austrian sample who do seem to acquire learner, grammar extra murally.
[00:35:18] And so to wrap this up, Not yet fully. We’re not at the conclusion yet, but still to wrap the findings up, yeah. preliminarily, in Sweden, extra mural English and instruction seem to go hand in hand and both seem to share the teaching load or so, whereas in Austria, learning happens primarily in the classroom. To date.
[00:35:48] I mean, this is of course shifting slowly because extra mural English is growing, but learning still takes place primarily in the classroom. And so interestingly, I also asked [00:36:00] students in the questionnaire, to what extent they believe that they learn grammar through extra mural English and through instruction.
[00:36:07] So let’s have a look. So what did I actually ask them? So I asked them. What do you think, or to what extent do you think you learn intuitive or you develop intuitive grammar, so feel, through extra mural English? To what extent do you feel like you developed “rule-based” knowledge through extra mural English?
[00:36:26] To what extent do you feel like you give out rule-based intuitive knowledge through instruction and rule-based knowledge through. And this was a Likert scale ranging from one: I don’t agree at all, to five: I fully agree. And so first of all, one has to say that yes, both learning groups seem to perceive both extra mural English, and instruction as helping them with grammar.
[00:36:52] Right. Because we’re up here, they agree. But there was still a significant difference between the two groups in terms [00:37:00] of their perceived effect on instruction, on grammar knowledge. So Swedish learners perceive it as less beneficial, still beneficial, but significantly less beneficial than Austrians. And what is also pretty interesting is that descriptively, we can see that in Austria extra mural English seems somewhat less important in the eyes of students than instruction and vice versa for Swedish learners.
[00:37:31] And then based on my findings, I also derived theory I tried to do so. So if you’re familiar with Robert DeKeyser’s skill acquisition theory, this is basically the part of my model here, starting with explicit knowledge and automatised knowledge. So in Robert DeKeyser’s skill acquisition theory, he explains or illustrates how explicit knowledge,
[00:37:59] so in a [00:38:00] typical EFL context, explicit knowledge is constructed first. And then this is automatized through practice. So this is what would be typical for a lower extra mural English context. But if we consider a context like Sweden, and many other subtitling countries, it’s likely that for the average learner, implicit knowledge is constructed first, even before they are taught English, even before they receive English instruction.
[00:38:31] And only then can this be supplemented by explicit instruction or by noticing features in extra mural English. And then this is automatized through both instruction or extra mural English. So I try to elaborate Robert DeKeyser’s model so that he can also account for a high EE context. And now we arrived at the conclusion.
[00:38:57] So extra mural English may predict [00:39:00] automatized implicit knowledge, especially if it is extensive and starts early, especially if it is multimodal, and if prior knowledge. Or prior extra mural English experience is given.
[00:39:16] And in terms of instruction, what was very striking and, interesting. And comforting to some extent, there is no one size fits all approach. So in high EE countries, extra mural English and instruction seem to share the teaching load. And more implicit and incidental grammar instruction apparently is, I call it possible, because we know through previous research, that explicit instruction is conducive to, to grammar knowledge.
[00:39:51] And if a language is learned primarily in the classroom then there needs to be some explicit instruction. But in [00:40:00] Sweden, if like for the average learner, there is extensive extra mural English, and so there can be more implicit incidental grammar instruction. In a lower extra mural English country, most learning happens in the classroom and explicit instruction in lower secondary school still seems to be necessary. But,
[00:40:21] since extra mural English is rising, this may allow for more incidental and more implicit instruction. And this is important, especially, I think in terms of learners’ motivation also because if learners increasingly use extra mural English at home, which is of course authentic language use that is enjoyable,
[00:40:42] to some extent it has been shown in research that students also expect this also from teaching or from the instructed environment . And so if the, if the focus then is too much on grammar, then this can be very demotivating.[00:41:00]
[00:41:01] There are of course, a number of limitations of this study. So testing in the school context is, implies many confounding variables, especially since I try to compare two countries. There were also many cultural differences that I noticed only when conducting the study, that probably impacted the results. Such as in Austria,
[00:41:26] every, like in each time it was almost the entire class being part of the study. Whereas in Sweden, it was very few students per class who were a part of the study. And then there were perhaps they as, didn’t take the testing as seriously. This is just my anecdotal evidence of course.
[00:41:45] But yeah, the atmosphere was somewhat different then. The samples very likely are not representative of the two countries, the ecological validity of the tests is [00:42:00] questionable, and reverse causality cannot be ruled out. So perhaps the statistical models, to some extent also showed that the students who already have good grammar knowledge are maybe then also more likely to engage in extra mural English rather than
[00:42:18] grammar knowledge being the outcome of extra mural English. Okay. All right. So thanks a lot for your attention. Here are my references and I’m very happy to take any questions. Thank you.