Knowledge sources in L2 learning

Abstract

Should one bother to teach grammar to second language (L2) learners of English? The purpose of this article is to examine the hypothesis that there is an interface between explicit and implicit knowledge sources. Three groups of learners at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University were asked to articulate, first without a prompt and then with a prompt, the grammatical rules they were applying to correct common errors.  The test results suggest that there is a high correlation between what they seemingly know implicitly and the hidden, possibly previously explicit knowledge source on which they are drawing.  The article concludes by discussing some of the theoretical implications of the research.