11 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING 11.1 Introduction ‘This chapter is devoted to ‘due to an assumption second language can be thought ly i, whether or not some mechanism, such as UG, is responsible for the learning of core grammar is not to be thought of a5 dependent on the context of th for clearly they do, the ‘most obvious being differences in the quantity and quality of input. For learners in a foreign language setting—that is, those learning another language in their home environment—there is not only limited input, but of the input comes from classmates whose knowledge of the ‘opportunities are also severely that can be and are shaped by the 11.2 Classroom language One of the main ditfere factors between classroom les and so-called naturalisti ich learning is the language available from which 368 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING learners can come to understand the workings of the L2 and formulate language classrooms, the language addressed to learnere modified, as we saw in chapter 10, ‘Gaies (1979) presented data from eight teacher trainees and their speech cach other and (b) four groups of ESL students at four proficiency level Table 11.1 presents portion ofthese daca for each of these five groups. As can be sec ere is a progression from lesser ion of proficiency level in fact, signifeane predicror of the syn: In foreign language instruction, very often the only language thet learners are exposed to is the one in the classroom. There are three sources of input: earlier that teaché learners is algo li prisingly there is evide another. For exampl NNSs of English ( performing a class ‘of Ann Arbor, Michigan (with a tape recorder) and ask people for direc ns to the train station. The tape recorder was left on during the entire time they were engaged in the task, including the time between stopping passersby for directions. They alternated stopping strangers to ask for ions, Following is alist of the questions they asked: NNSI: Can you tell me where is the Table 11.1 Complesty of teacher speech directed at different proficiency levels Words per Tammie Ratio of dlauses to T- 430SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION jpted change inthe form of her utterance ‘where isthe rain sation? to the correct not from a correct form to ‘Samuda (1980) listened to 10 hours of taped conve ‘only one example of a change from a correct forn ‘Thus, errors from classmates may not be incorporated into a learner's ‘grammar It may be that leaeners kriow when they are right and may also kknow when they are wrong or at least have a sense that they are not sure. “When learners internalize a new form, they may use the positive evidenee they heae/read co strengthen that knowledge. That is, they may receive confirmatory evidence for their correct hypotheses. When a hypothesis is not correct, there is no confirmatory evidence and the knowledge is, loosely represented, resulting in uncertainty. fet 10 we looked at interactions in which negotiation about a form leads to knowledge about the form, We present an example (From Swain and Lapkin, 1998, p. 329) of two classroom learners who are tn essay, They are grade 8 students who have been in a jon program since kindergarten, The vocabulary Jing of Kim and responses from Kim, he comes t French word réeille matin. TURN# 2 Kim: On peut pas déterminer qu’estce que c'est. “One can’t figure out what 3. Ricks 4 Kim smatin rouge... sur une table brune, et le heures, et c'est tout. 370 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING wn table, and 9 Ricks le dormir aprés que ... la réve-matin est és lit six heures un, 1¢ is sleeping after the alarm clock rang again. And the minute after six o'clock.” «du son + + of the sound...” “Because of...” 69 Kim: Du réveille-matin qui sonne? Does that sound OK? “Of the alarm clock that rings? Does that sound OK: 10 Rick: Or what about ... Jacqueline se léve & cause du ... du réveille-... yeah, qui sonne “Or what about... Jacqueline [the girl in thei st because of the ... oF the alarm... yeah, that rings.” Or you can say, du réveille-matin, or du sonnement du IK. Or you can say, of the alarm clock, or the ring of the gets up in pour aceéter le sonnement. -m clock to stop the ring.’ tresses component meaning “wake.”) ‘What we seein che example above is an exchenge that includes hypoth- ‘sis generation, hypothesis testing, and the extension of knowledge to sw contexts, What is interesting is Rick's initial use of the correct word in turn 3, followed in turn 9 by two uses of the incorrect réve-matin (once ith the feminine article la and once with the masculine article [e 3mSECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION is acceptable. So, we see Rick's change to the correct form. The change is not a one-time affat, but shows a back and forth waver: ing between correct and incorrect forms, Rick is s hypotheses (his que tory or disconfirms has entertained, that we return ‘comes about through problem-solving in collaboration with more cap- able pects. However, as mentioned ea forms can serve it is not always the case that learner 10d” input for other learners. In another excerpt from these same two learners (Swain and Lopkin, 1998, p. 333), it is clear that without teacher intervention these two participants will either walk away uncertain about the correct form or will learn something incorrect in French; that is, they will practice and automatize the interlanguage, perhaps far from target language norms. marche, “Who is walking towards school, walking.” Both march eral is seen as having g classroom is a place where conversational interaction can often provide opportunities for learning, an important caveat is in order—teacher intervention is often essential. 11.3 Processing instruction Processing instruction refers to a type of instruction that takes as its basis how learners process input (ee chapter 8 for a discussion of input pro- cessing). In particular, it deals with the conversion of input to intake and 37 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING focuses on form-meaning relationships (VanPatten, 1995; Cadierno, 1993; VanPatten and Sanz, 1995), In a series of, ‘VanPatten and his colleagues presented a model for vention that relied heavily on the notion of attention specifica (see Figures 11.1 an internalized system to (begin t0) develop, the put is processed and hence the way the system develops. Input <= Intake <=> Developing system <=> Output Cambridge Univecscy Press Input <=> Intake <= Daveloping system ==> Output t Processing mechansmsSECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION ‘VanPatten (20072, 2007b; see also VanPatten, 2004) proposed prin- ciples of L2 input processing. VanPatten (2008) presents three premises that are che bass of processing instruction: need input for acquisition; jem in aequisition might be the way in which learners 1nd how learners process inp acquisition of formal features of language. VanPetten (2007) outlines three basic features of processing instruction. 1 Give learners information about a steuctuee ot form. Inform learners about a particular processing strategy that may get in the way of selecting the formistructure during compre- hension, 3 Structure input ‘meaning and not hat learners must rely on form/structure to get ‘on natural processing tendencies He presents an example from the French ceusative,as in Jean fait promener le chien 4 Marie. John makes to walk the dog to Mary "john makes Mary walle the dog.” “The first step is to have learners answer the question Who walks the dog? level and discourse-related) jon, Learners in the pro- derstand and produce Teaeners in, Patten und Sanz, 1995), These have been conducted with languages other than Sp example, Wong (2004) and VanPatten and Wong (2004) in French, Benati (2004) in Italian. These have shown support for this 304 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING approach, DeKeyser and Sokalski (1996), DeKeyser, Salaberry, Robinson, attempts practice ‘Another series of studies that considered the role of input processing, ifetent manner, is known as the “garden path’ studies Ilo and Herron (1988, 1989), Here input in the form of correc jons to & general rule) was provided either (a) before a faulty generalization was made (in the VanPatten framework, this is akin to the input-processing mode in which the focus an overgeneralizetion. Tomasello und Herron found th feedback was more meaningful after learners had been induced to pro- duce an error as opposed fo “preventing” an error. sat from these studies is thet some sort of comprehension ‘must take place before we can begin to tal ake and ecquisition. This, of course, begs the question of what is meant by comprehension. prehension. Clearly, synonymous (see for meaning, whet ged here, however, thatthe former precedes the later: fe comprehension is @ prerequisite to syntactic comprehension tactic comprehension is @ prerequisite to acquisition.* Neither guarantees the following step; in othet words, semantic comprehension js necessary for syntactic comprehension but does not guarantee it Swain (1995) cited work by Clark and Clark (1977) that suggested a difference between these two types of comprehension: other input Listeners usually know 2 lor about what a speaker is going to say, They can make shrewd guesses from what has been said and from the situetion being described. They can also be confident that the speaker will make sense, be relevant, provide given and new information appropriately, and in general be cooperative. 315SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Listeners almost certainly use this sort of information to select ‘among alternative parses of a sentence, to anticipate words and , and sometimes even to circumvent syntactic analyses (Clark and Clark, 1977, p. 72) follows that comprehension (in. 3 tle purpose in helping understand the syotax of the language, which fo an olimate language learning. Similarly, Cook © decode language for meaning—‘processing language to get the “message! "—is not the same as code breaking—che determination of the nature of the linguistic systems used for conveying meaning or the “processing [of] language to get the ‘rules’ " (p. 76), jodel together, we can find another in « meaningful way: In general, the thre ent on one another and the arguments for one depend on d the Monitor is needed der; a Learning-Acqul circular, rendering it vacuous Nonetheless, because Krashen’s formulation as stated may not have theoretical validity, one cannot take thie a seep further and argue that an order of acquisition does not exist. The implication of acquisition order in only a trivial 1983), The most 1 the discussion of the juestions. Findings based on the natural progres: 376 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING room context ate supported by a number of studies 1989) argued that stages in this developmental on. He investi- children ranging © of instruction on a particular ge. Some were atthe immediately preceding stage and others were at & ‘much earlier stage. Only the former group learned the instructional target, suggesting that the other children could not learn because they dy. ‘As discussed in chapter 10, Mackey (1995, 1999) set out to derermine jon could alter the develop- mental progression of the acquisition of questions. In her research, there was a positive relationship between interaction and development in shat learners who were involved in structurefocused interaction moved along a developmental path more rapidly than learners who did not. As sraction was abe to ‘step up the pace” of development, but learners beyond a developmental stage. In other stages could not be skipped. There are constraints were not developmental to generalize. What would 4 Jearner were to come to learn a relative clause position before learning an easier one. ‘Would knowledge of that more difficult relative clause construction gen- cto knowledge of the easier relative clause positions! This would rnot be unexpected because, in some sense, knowledge of a more difficult seuctute should incorporate knowledge of a related easier structure. In fact, two studies lend support to this predictor 82) and the other by Eckman, Bell, and Nelson (1988). In the first study, two groups of second Janguage learners were given specific instruction on ive clauses. One group was instructed on subject and di relatives, the second group on object of preposition 3 period of instruction, both groups were tested 01 types, The group that had received and direct object instruction only performed well on those 1wo lause types, but not on others, a7preposition), b hierarchy—that is, subj "She study by Eckman, ‘groups of learners: cor of che chree experiment and Nelson was similar. There were four ‘group and three experimental groups. Each groups received instruction on ene of three ject, direct object, or object of preposition, results are given in Figure 11.3. ‘The figure shows improvement rates for the three types of clauses. As can be seen, the greatest improvement on all three structures ‘occurs in that group that was given instruction on the lowest position (the ‘object of preposition group). The group with the next greatest improve- . improvement on two structures) was the direct object group, and then the subject group, although the subject group showed greater improvement than the direct object group on the relative clauses on which they had had instruction (subjects). The conclusions of both these Bite eb aan potion Figure 11.3 Interaction of group and 1980, Apple Linu 20 Rested by permission 378 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING studies suggest that learners’ maximum generalization occurs from ‘more marked (or di ficult to more difficult does not eppesr 0 found that learners ger Hierarchy comes from a study by Croteau tivisation of foreign language learners of found that when there was instruction or hierarchy, there was not generalization to e was inst all instances. Specif relative clauses generalized to subject relative clauses, but those taught object of preposition relative clauses generalized to the direct object position, but not to the subject position. Nor surprisingly, chose taught genitive relative clauses did not generalize at all. This is not surprising because the genitive in previous studies did not behave according to the predictions of the hierarchy, possibly because the English genitive may behave as a unit thae takes on another position of the hierarchy. For ‘example, the genitive whose brother in the sentence That's the man whose brother 1 saw may be interpreted as a direct object of I saw and thus takes on the characteristics of the direct object position rather than @ enitive. More recently, a wider of range of languages study. In a study of Arabic ke and Lightbown (2003) found ‘marked than the 1s from the instructed relative clause oblique) to essior as well as more difficult relative clause types. Her ive clauses, which are generally equivalent to object of preposition relative clauses, although in Japanese there ace postpositions (they occur after the noun) not prepositions. Her r showed th ity to generalize relative clauses. In particu matical structure regard to general n, her study suggests that generalization from more 379SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION marked to less marked is possible and may indeed be en effective basis of bus design. ‘A final point to consider is that learning of relative clauses may not iven by language-related issues, but may also be mediated by ‘memory being a prime possibility. wguage (0 facilitate acquis to consider directly the effects of language focus in instruction. ‘Throughout this book we deal with the concept of attention. Implicit {in this notion isthe concept of focus on form.* Long (1991) distinguished between focus on form and focus on formS. The latter refers to earl teaching methodologies in which the main organizing pi language classrooms was the accumulation of individual language items sndings, passives). The former refers to a need for meaning- is embedded. As Long Tearner-genesated swords eather than ‘A:study by Gass, Mackey, STortes, and Fernéndes-Gareia (1999) supports the notion that freeing up the cognitive burden of focusing on both form snd meaning allows greater opportunity to focus on form. In their study, participants performed an onli of a short video clip, Participants who saw the same video multi Le, who did not 380 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING have to focus on meaning during the latter viewings) showed improve- measures of proficiency, morphosyntax, and lexical ly Signed what she calls logs” to students. jon logs train students to think about their language use and par- ‘to notice the gop between their L? language use and the language Wve or fluent speakers of the L2. They provide 8 means for learners to be detectives in the sense that they are responsible for gather- ing thetr own language daca, analyzing evidence, and making and testing hypotheses. The logs are language diaries in which students write down what fluent speakers say, how they say it, in what situations and with whom, and how NSs react when a leaner says something (Cohen, 1999), As the teacher says in her instructions to students, interaction logs are "to help you to notice how you are using language and how it may be different from how native speakers use language.” She provides numerous examples of how students can interact, ftom the very simple task of asking for directions to making small talk with someone at the grocery store. An advantage of interaction logs is that they al analyze their own language in a format that goes beyond t instrument she'd already bought for her son, Then I teplied “Yes, realy. I bought a bicycle for my son a week ‘ago. The bike is expensive than I thought, partly because it bas Star Wars decoration on.” Then she esked me, “Did 2 The one with te... neee Ut” a perfect time to use “manner of because I understood rest of her talk except the could guess it might be one Deb, Did you say tranee «I? fed her sound. Then with some 381SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION gesture she explained, the interaction logs, one of the when she went to the superm: she wanted to drive out or not. So 1 from her. Last Sunday, when I went was ready to heat that again and | Because most of time, I was so nervous when the cashier asked me some questions and they all spoke quickly. But not this time, finally, after the cashier packed all my stuff into the plastic bag, he asked "Do you want to drive ‘No, thanks.” I stid. But I noticed he seemed Tosay some word instead of “out”. The last word sounded But [checked it up in He finally succeed, r Succeeds, : Yes the student does not appreciate the full force of the ‘modifies his original utterance accordingly, Whether his yes indicates any- thing more than closure to the exchange is, of course, unclear shows that metalinguistie training in focusing on form can res ry to grammatical form rather than just to lexical form, as occurs Obes (2001) noted thar students in a classroom context can assimilate 382 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING corréctive feedback even whe ident (C) repeats recasts ) T= Teacher; K and C= students TT: Kon shumatsu hima desu ka? Kyliesen. “This weekend are you free? Kj “You're not free!” (T corrects form) (Oh ja acim fasen (hima ja arimasen “Nor free." (C repeats correct form.) nt C gives a sotto voce rendition of the correct form, using the formation and morphological forms: Eni relationship between notic 2" (gee section 11.4). The system, for example, appears to be virtually impermeable ion (pechaps because the explanation for its use is, at least, semantic, bringing in a nuraber of complex considerations (see chapter 2)). Furthermore, we saw in chapters 6 and 10 that different kinds of input might be necessary. In particular, we saw that there a what positive evidence can do and that neg necessary in some situations. Doughty and areas to consider inthe study of focus on form, two of which are relevant to our current discuss structed learning: timing and forms to focus on (see also Spade, 1997). 383SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 15.1 Timing Harley (1998) investigated early focue-onform intervention with young fon form. The learners in her study were Grade 2 students in an eatly French immersion program, The linguistic focus was acqui French gender, which in Harley's words is a “quintessent aspect” of French (p. 156). There is little in the way of semantics incorporated into this feature. Gender assignment problem for those schooled in an immersion program. P pretested prior to the fiveweek experimental session and were pi ment, The test results than no instructional focus, but knowledge to other words. Hi more successful in ind 168). However, in pos (Gee Gass and technique), students tended to ‘out the specific 18) reviewed a number of studies that deal with timing she cutioned researchersiteachers not to take 100 ‘of developmental sequences within a pedagogical In other words, while it may be the case that input on stages that may be considerably beyond the learner's current level does not lead to earning, there is no harm done to the learner. What is relevant, however, is the need for teachers to have appropriate expectations of what learners snd will not be able to take from a lesson containing input on stage well beyond cheir levels, Lightbown’s own research (Sp and Lightbown, 1993) was conducted at the early stages of the Pienemann model discussed in section 11.4 and in Chapter 8. Following instruction ssuch as Where is the dog? and Where ‘complex questions such as How do you say tdches in English? However, a3 ese may have been little more than ‘of the syntax underlying them. In ieless present and may then have served as furt own developing systems. Thus, the fact that they INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING even following insteuetion on questions, learners’ knowledge increased (Spada and Lightbown, 1995). ‘Another way of looking at timing comes from a study by Gass and Alvarez Torres (2005), They looked at the ordering effects of classroom of i consisted of four phosyntax. The students warners of Spanish and the ‘morphosyntax structures were gender agreement (Spanish nouns and adjectives agree in number and gender) and the verb 10 be, which has two forms and is known to be problematic for English learners, Examples of gender agreement are given in I1-8 and 11-9 and examples of the use of the two verbs to be (estar and ser) are given in 11-10. Their study only concerned the use of estar to express location. (11-8) Gender agreement (grammatical and ungramamatical) ‘Tengo una malete amarila. have a sutease yellow (f) [have a yellow suitease.” al because the adjective has @ ‘Some nouns do not 9 below. ave grammatical gender, 2s in The suitcase isto the side of the door. “The suitcase is next to the dot” bb Lamalets esté al lado de la puerta ‘The suitcase is to the side of the door, “The suitease is next to the door.” 385SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION ‘Their results showed that there were significant gains for all conditions for vocabulary. The gains were not all-encompassing for either gender or the mechenism hypothesized Jing through interaction, Recall suggestion of the possi xervention given that there may be other sources of variation in the learner's grammar which ‘might not be immediately apparent and which might suggest that this is in area of instability and may in fact reflect "deeply entrenched rivals” (Sharwood Smith and Teuscott, 2005). 11.5.2 Forms to focus on ¢ that one cannot use focus on form instruction wi gram is study incorre ). Passives were used only group served as the contro! had exp] groups. partial support for would outperform the cont results were more complex, sh the exo exper -oup and that there would be a and take in. new information. A second finding is that not are created equal with regard to input type. For the patticipi 386 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING use of the form, 10 providing input alone. For the passives, there was ite difference between the two experimental groups, Any means of highlighting the form (input flood or instruction) serves equally to induce In gener consider what is being targeted focus on and how bese to relate that information to a learner's indie vidual knowledge state and to the means by which a form is focused on. 11.5.3 Input manipulation and input enhancement |A significant function of language instruction is the manipulation of input. That is, teachers ean provide varying degrees of explicitness in the yput. A goal of SLA research is to determine the effectiveness of cexplicimess in terms of learners’ developing grammars. The field has changed from a position in the 1970s and 1980s in which, following Krashen, what was needed to create implicit knowledge (more or less equivalent to linguistic competence) was comprehensible input. Exy knowledge. In later years, the fusion of implicit! it knowledge became more apparent: suggested that explicit lesrning (¢,, knowledge through it information might resu knowledge becomes proct umber of forms, but the common ch the languege in some meaning- manne This can include language use (some lf some response to an audio prompt (answering 1a comprehension question following a listening oF reading passage). Lesehky and Bley-Vroman (1993) proposed 2 scheme for determining language demands during language use, distinguishing whether a form is netural in the task, useful to the task, or essential to che task. They used this scheme to determine the proposed effectiveness of different kinds of tasks, in terms of automatization, control, and whether a task relates to comprehension or production. ‘The concept of input enhancement highlights ways in which input is 387SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION made salient to learners (see Sherwood Smi wood Smith's focus was not on shat Underlying the importance of input enhancement is the concept of ing discussed in chapter 10. Given that input enhancement is a means of drawing a learner's attention to something, an underlying ossumprion is thet noticing is «prerequisite ro process internal devices (his oF her own processing mechanisms) or by something that is externally created; this Inter is input enhancement. Sharwood Smith refers to two vatisbles involved in externally created salience: elaboration (eg, repetition) and explicitess (eg, metalingustic saformation). Input enhancement has not been tected in precisely the same way and the results have not always been consistent (ef. Polio, 2007, for an over- For example, Jourdenais, Ota, Stauffet, Boyson, and Doughty noticing and learning resulted from texeual enhance: and Leow (1997) hee review of input differences with certainty the extent to Simple enbancement is more target form when seque: concurrent with comprehension, ‘© Simple enhancement of a non-meaningful form does not hurt comprehension. ‘© Simple enhancement of 2 meaningful form contributes to comprehension. ‘+ Simple enhancement is more effective if it draws focal rather than peripheral attention, © Simple enhancement, whet evoke aberrant noticing, resu ‘© comprehension than when it is nbined with input flood, is likely 10 in overuse of the enhanced form. 388 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING combining different types of enhance- back] is more likely rroceasing then simple enhancement, ly to the extent of engendering “overlearning.” © Compound enhancement 11.6 Uniqueness of instruction sruction can have its unique repercussions In this section, we present two instances where the instruction (or lack thereof) may have produced ‘unique results. Pavesi (1986) specifically compared stic versus instructed learners in terms of their ecquisition of clauses (see chapter 7 and section 11.4). All learners were Italian speakers learning English. There were 48 instructed learners and 38 natu ‘The instructed learners were high-school students (aged 14-1 died English for four years on average. They bad had vi {informal exposure to instruction had been grammar-based and they had had substential written input. The second group was made 10 English was suction. The results from dy discussed elsewhere in this book 4, object of compa did no affect eis ecqui in the number of marked relative clause types taxed, with che formal group using more, In addition, the informal groups used a greater aumber of noun copies (Number five i the boy tvho the dg i biting the bop) then the formal group, whereas the formal troup used more pronoun copies (Number fie isthe boy who the dog is biting hi, Therefore, ic appeats thatthe classroom context can provide a tichness thee an informal environment cannot. However, an import- ant caveat in understanding these results is that the two groups differed least two impor nto question the findings based. putely on leaning ‘A second example of instructional uniqueness comes from work by Lighthown (1983). She noted that French learners of English tended to make a large number of overuse errors. In chapter 8 we discussed the concept of U-shaped let (progressive) associated that form che present tense in French and 389SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUIS fed its appropriate use, The overuse continued even. ‘exposure to the form in the input. instruction coupled with a study-abroad experience provides the optimal condition for pragmatics learning Laufer (2008) makes the same point with reyaed to vocabulary. Inp alone is insufficient for vocebulary leaning. She takes this a step further and proposes that focus-on-form instruction is essential 10 instru and does not need t9 be condhicted with the context of a com tive task, “Thus, instructed learning may clearly result in ions drawn by the learners precisely because th 11.7 Effectiveness of instruction The effectiveness of instruction is often assumed, although not always expressed sucein Foreign language learning under classroom conditions seems to ly follow the same set of nat other types of language acquisition ... there seems to be a uni versal and common set of principles which are flexible enough and adaptable to the large number of conditions under which Janguage learning may take place. These observations further. ‘more suggest that the possibility of manipulating and controlling the students! verbal behavior in the classroom is in fact quite Firited, Understanding the effectiveness of instruction ent the type of instruction. For example, is it explic focus on meaning! A focus on form, or even a focus on forms? Norris an ‘Oreega (2000), in their overview of instructed SLA, found that ex 390 INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING sportant fo note, as findings should be treated with of learning out- ‘comes in the ceatments, (2) implicit treatments may require a longer period of time for learning to take place and consequently may necessitate longer postobservation times than explicit tennis and) thete was often an inconient simple, which potentially favors ex ever, in his analysis of Norris and Ortega (2000), is led to different con- clusions about the effectiveness of instruction. ‘As with many ateas of SLA research, the results are not always clear ceut, DeKeyser (1995) found positive effecs for expl a did de Graaf (1997). In this latter study, explicit rule presentation was beneficial when it was accompanied by ewo other important ingredients: 999) and VanPatten and Oikkenon (1996) did not show positive effects, In the cate of the former study, the issue of task-demand came ferent types of output end different types of feedback. For example, in a study by Guss, Mackey, and Ross- ned with a compatison of classroom versus patterns, the authors used three tasks: a consensus task, a spot-the-difference task, and # one-way map task, Differences were found among task types, but Explicitess cannot be considered in the abstract. lated through an experiment more beneficial for syntactic earning than for mophosyat of learners to self-focus their attention on the lexicon. Addit focused attention had a greater role in the early stages of acquisition, ‘most likely due to the greater linguistic sophistication of more advanced earners, who have suffici to focus on complex parts of Janguage on their own without externally focused atten the question of feedback—when and if and, vant to understanding the rol not always agreeme a welbknown study lowing treatment on than other types of feed- back (statement of correctlincorrect, recast). On the other hend, Sanz 39SECOND LANGUAGE AC} ON inet object pronouns feedback withou feedback with no explanation, and no feedback. The latter cate 2 difference in the moment of feedback. understand the effectiveness to, individual differences, such as learner aptitude and matches! mismatches between learning style and instructor approach. There are no easy answers, What i clear is that instruction does make a diference, but how precisely it makes a difference and what the contributing 11.8 Conclusion is chaprer, we have looked at instructed second language learning th an eye toward understanding how learning in and out of the class- room may or may not diff ve briefly consider how way second language research can contribute to successful practice is chrough the expecta priming device for learning. Even expl intcoduction to information about a form rather than being the moment of learning, In sum, even though instruction is an afd to learning (ox, in some instances, « hindrance) 10 understand how second languages are acquired in general if we are to understand how they are acquited in a particular context. We next turn to a consideration (of some of the influences on second language learning that are nc: dependent on language and which can affect the formation, restructuring, and fossiization of second language grammars. Suggestions for additional reading INSTRUCTED SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING Ingue Enhancement: From Theory and Research ro the Clasoom. Wynne Wong. ‘MeGraw-Hill (2005), -ond language pedagogy? How are they different? How hey afect exch ather and how might the study of one influence practices of the other? Relate your answers to a specific it the elationship, consider ‘be able to relate) 2 One reason people are interested in the field of SLA is because of suage pedagogy: In chapter 6 for language teaching? In groups, complete one of the following two sentences. If you are a language teacher, you had better know the Subset Principle because If you are a language teacher, it makes no difference whether ot not you know the Subser Principle because In your answer, you might want to consider the difference between 3936 SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION being able to put a name on the phenomenon and understanding the effects of the Subset Principle, rashen’s view on the function of the in your way" with ts focus on form. ion) be appropriate or necess ‘mensble to focus on form? Why of why ‘Ace all steucrues equ not! Can you give examples from your own teaching/learning experi- ence when you could not “figure out” what the correct generalization should be? Consider the concept of negative evidence. When do you think ‘To Engh tach’ dina students often omit the thie peron singular -+ even at faitly advanced proficiency level cain 2 aaqulaon, how do you explain els 394