It is widely acknowledged by second language researchers that whether pedagogical rules should or can be explicitly taught is largely dependent on their complexity. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on what rule complexity exactly means. This paper first examines existing accounts of rule complexity and presents a conceptual analysis of the term ‘rule’. It then proposes that ‘complex’ should not be equated with ‘difficult’, but used in a purely structural sense. Specifically a conditional formulation is proposed in which the number of concepts in the antecedent and the consequent, the number of subconditions, and the number of ‘if-then’ connections (subrules) within a given rule domain govern complexity. Finally, a classification of strategies of complexity reduction in foreign language pedagogy is sketched. Throughout, examples will be given from the field of German as a foreign language.
2016. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF GUIDED INDUCTION VERSUS DEDUCTIVE INSTRUCTION ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPLEX SPANISHGUSTARSTRUCTURES. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 38:2 ► pp. 265 ff.
Housen, Alex & Hannelore Simoens
2016. INTRODUCTION: COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVES ON DIFFICULTY AND COMPLEXITY IN L2 ACQUISITION. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 38:2 ► pp. 163 ff.
Rodríguez Silva, Luis Humberto & Karen Roehr-Brackin
2016. PERCEIVED LEARNING DIFFICULTY AND ACTUAL PERFORMANCE. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 38:2 ► pp. 317 ff.
Graus, Johan & Peter-Arno Coppen
2015. Defining grammatical difficulty: a student teacher perspective. Language Awareness 24:2 ► pp. 101 ff.
Housen, Alex
2014. Difficulty and Complexity of Language Features and Second Language Instruction. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 1 ff.
Housen, Alex
2021. Difficulty and Complexity of Language Features and Second Language Instruction. In The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, ► pp. 1 ff.
Scheffler, Paweł
2011. Rule difficulty: teachers’ intuitions and learners’ performance. Language Awareness 20:3 ► pp. 221 ff.
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