Learners acquired untaught syntactic properties but failed to show sensitivity to agreement they had been explicitly taught and practiced¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2010 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? In on-line processing research comparing native and mid-level non-native Spanish speakers, learners showed sensitivity to untaught syntactic violations but not to subject-verb agreement violations they had explicitly learned and practiced. → 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

q2 · i? · theoretical · r2

The article reports its authors' own on-line processing study (VanPatten, Keating, & Leeser, forthcoming): natives showed sensitivity to violations in all domains including subject-verb agreement; non-natives matched natives on syntactic violations but not agreement. No effect sizes are printed in the essay.

"the learners never practice or explicitly learned the syntactic aspects we tested yet they had explicitly learned and had practiced (including feedback) on subject-verb agreement since the beginning of their language studies"

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Syntax — outcome: instruction changes it

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
• Applying skill theory to grammar conflates constructs: pedagogical rules are not what exists in learners' mental representation — related
• A 2010 narrative review reports that even very advanced L2 learners read more slowly than native speakers and miss subtle anaphoric interpretation distinctions — related
• Syntactic rather than semantic processing of input is essential for correcting incomprehensible output — related
• Explicitly learned L2 rules can be automatized through systematic practice after a metalinguistic criterion is reached — reports the opposite
• No single rule was professed to be known by half the university students despite all having been taught the rules the previous winter — related