Chapter published in:
Doing SLA Research with Implications for the Classroom: Reconciling methodological demands and pedagogical applicability
Edited by Robert M. DeKeyser and Goretti Prieto Botana
[Language Learning & Language Teaching 52] 2019
► pp. 83–106

The roles of explicit instruction and guided practice in the proceduralization of a complex grammatical structure

| Kobe Gakuin University
This chapter reports a classroom-based experimental study focusing on the effects of providing metalinguistic explanation (ME) before asking learners to perform a practice activity involving story reconstruction on their acquisition of a grammatical structure. The task required learners to comprehend the oral narrative with the help of a written script and illustrations describing the story and then to reconstruct the story while referring to the illustrations and a list of keywords. Three instructional conditions were compared: the ME+Task where the learners received ME and then completed a story reconstruction task, the Task Only, where learners just completed the task, and the ME Only where they just received the ME. This chapter also considers the relevance of the study to classroom practice. It will provide suggestions for teaching limited-proficiency learners a complex grammatical structure. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the ecological validity and pedagogical implications of this study.
Keywords: explicit instruction, skill-learning theory, presentation-practice-production (PPP), grammar acquisition, text reconstruction
Published online: 07 March 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/lllt.52.05shi
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