Applying skill theory to grammar conflates constructs: pedagogical rules are not what exists in learners' mental representation¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r2 · q1
Currency · newest study 2010 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q1 i? Grammar as the formal properties of language is abstract implicit knowledge, not a skill to be acquired; skill-theory research uses artificial rules never derived from linguistic theory. → Bill VanPatten 2010

Evidence¶

Bill VanPatten 2010¶

Bill VanPatten. (2010). The Two Faces of SLA: Mental Representation and Skill. International Journal of English Studies, 10(1), 1-18. https://www.um.es/ijes doi:10.6018/ijes/2010/1/113951

q1 · i? · theoretical · r2

Theoretical argument in section III. The author critiques the declarative-to-procedural-to-automatized paradigm (DeKeyser 1997), noting its rules are artificial shorthand and that skill research imports constructs from typing and letter-detection tasks that may not transfer to language, per Schmidt (1992).

"grammar as the formal properties of language is not a “skill” to be acquired; it is knowledge (as abstract and implicit mental representation) that is tapped during linguistic performance"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Explicit L2 grammar instruction leads to larger learning effects than implicit instruction, as reported in the reviewed synthesis literature — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• Learners acquired untaught syntactic properties but failed to show sensitivity to agreement they had been explicitly taught and practiced — related
• All student groups preferred explicit over implicit grammar instruction — related
• Explicit grammar teaching outperforms implicit teaching; one review found the advantage only for complex rules, but a meta-analysis found it for simple rules too — related
• Grammatical skill is not the focus of Second Language Acquisition, per the study's synthesis of SLA theories and methods — related
• Learners' sensitivity to frequency has implications for theories of implicit and explicit learning and their interactions — related
• Peer assessment skills are complex and not automatically acquired, so training and guidance are a crucial design variable — related
• Mental representation is not amenable to direct explicit instruction because UG and parsers operate only on input data — related
• No single rule was professed to be known by half the university students despite all having been taught the rules the previous winter — related