Through the Learner’s Choice: Explicit or Implicit Grammar Instruction?

Iran, ID CLEaR2015-202

Grammar, which is one of the most important parts of English teaching as a second language, traditionally consists of giving learners the opportunity to produce correct structures. The point is that, how should learners acquire such an important skill? To find out which one is more effective -implicit or explicit- we produce a Likert questionnaire for one of our researcher’s classes that was held during the fall semester 2014. Learners acquired grammar explicitly on the first 10 sessions and acquired grammar implicitly on the next 10 sessions. The participants of our study include 30 middle school pre-intermediate students studying English as second language in Pooyan English, French, and Arabic Language Institute in Semnan, Iran. The data obtained are analyzed descriptively using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22. The results showed that although in some parts of grammar instructor’s explanation is needed, learners prefer to find out the rules of grammar themselves through practice and discuss with their classmates. The majority of learners in the class that we investigated prefer implicit learning instruction over explicit instruction.

Key words: explicit instruction, grammar, implicit instruction