MSc Yordanka Brunet Valle
Introduction
One of the issues that have been analysed by many authors is the fact concerning the implicit and explicit knowledge of the Second Language, their characteristics, advantages and disadvantages and their contribution to Second Language Acquisition.
Development
In my view the subject concerning how learners should acquire the second language is a very controversial issue. It is not easy to identify if it would be better for learners to acquire the language through implicit or explicit knowledge, in an unconscious way or the other way around.
When we make reference to explicit and implicit knowledge and its contribution to the acquisition of the second language, it is necessary to mention that both provide benefits to the second language and allow students to acquire it but in different ways.
Implicit knowledge contributes to the acquisition of the second language through different actions, but mainly by means of the interaction with native speakers. The interaction between learners and native speakers give the possibility to acquire new vocabulary, chunks, phrases, and even slang.
Students make a great effort trying to communicate and being understood by people, but they face lots of difficulties concerning communication, because the most important issue in the implicit knowledge is to get the meaning of the messages, and there is not focus on grammatical structures, which is a very important element for communicating efficiently. Consequently, it is necessary to mention that the interaction helps learners to improve their pronunciation and to highly develop learners’ speaking skills in the second language because it will force them to talk.
When learners are sharing with native speakers in the second language, the culture of it should be acquired too. Through interaction, going outside and visiting different places such as museums, theatres, restaurants or galleries learners will have the opportunity to acquire the second language and a general cultural background by means of implicit knowledge. So, the culture will allow learners understand the language they are acquiring in a better way.
Besides implicit knowledge contributes to the acquisition of the second language when students read. Learners can read materials, such as newspapers or magazines with interesting subjects written in the second language that allow them to get and improve their level of assimilation and interpretation concerning the second language. That is why it is so important teachers stimulate students to read systematically.
Another action that favours the acquisition of the second language through implicit knowledge is watching a T.V program. Taking into account a film, for instance, it allows learners to fix the content very well because they establish a link between the visual scenes and what they are listening to. So, they will acquire the second language in an unconscious way.
Due to the reasons mentioned before, it is clear evident that the role of implicit knowledge in the second language acquisition is significant because it helps learners to obtain certain knowledge and the culture which is part of the language. However, explicit knowledge contributes to the acquisition of the second language but in a different way, because it occurs in the classrooms based on the teachers’ support, using different materials such as books, videos or software and the interaction mainly happens between the teacher and the classmates or between the classmates.
So, explicit knowledge contributes in an effective way to the acquisition of the second language, because teachers emphasise the development of the four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing. So, through interaction with the teacher in the classroom learners consciously learn the grammatical structures perfectly, because teachers focus their attention on the explanation of the rules in order that students can communicate correctly
By means of peer interaction in the classrooms explicit knowledge contributes to the acquisition of the second language. Teachers organize different types of communicative activities, like, dialogues, dramatizations, role plays and games that favour the acquisition and the development of the four skills, mainly the speaking skills, based on the communicative approach. Those activities also help them to develop creativity and to increase motivation towards the target language. But the classrooms’ atmosphere should contribute in a positive way to the development of the teaching-learning process.
The use of some materials as a support of the second languages’ lessons is an important issue that provides the acquisition of the target language. The use of videos, for instance, makes learning more interesting, dynamic and motivating and if teachers use authentic videos in which native speakers appear, the result of the acquisition of the second language will be better.
In conclusion there are several reasons why either the implicit or the explicit knowledge contributes to the acquisition of the second language because each of them provides the knowledge of the target language but using different ways. Even though, some authors are totally in favour of the implicit knowledge, in my view, the explicit knowledge plays the most significant role for learners’ acquisition of the target language, because all the support they will need, they will find it in classrooms. What do you think?
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