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Cognitive Individual Differences in Second Language Processing and Acquisition
Edited by Gisela Granena, Daniel O. Jackson and Yucel Yilmaz
[Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 3] 2016
► pp. 327–349

The role of explicit language aptitude in implicit, explicit, and mixed feedback conditions

| Indiana University
| Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
| Indiana University

This study examined whether there is any relationship between second language (L2) learning outcomes under different negative feedback conditions and cognitive abilities for language learning that involve explicit cognitive processes (i.e. explicit language aptitude). The study followed a pretest, immediate posttest, delayed posttest design, and used a set of controlled oral production tests as outcome measures. Between the pretest and the immediate posttest, 80 L2 learners of English carried out three oral production tasks, in which their errors on the indefinite article were treated according to the group they had been assigned to (i.e. explicit, implicit, mixed, reduced explicit or no-feedback). Three subtests from the LLAMA Language Aptitude Test battery (Meara 2005) were used to test the learners’ explicit language aptitude. Results showed that only on the immediate posttest and only under the explicit feedback condition was explicit language aptitude predictive of L2 performance.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Relative effectiveness of feedback types
  • 3.Explicit language aptitude (ELA)
  • 4.Present study
  • 5.Method
    • 5.1Participants
    • 5.2Target structure
    • .3Treatment tasks
      • 5.3.1Story retelling
      • 5.3.2Spot the difference
      • 5.3.3Guided oral production
    • 5.4Pretest/posttest/delayed posttest
      • 5.4.1Story retelling
      • 5.4.2Spot the difference
      • 5.4.3Guided oral production
    • 5.5Explicit language aptitude tests
    • 5.6Treatment groups
      • 5.6.1Explicit
      • 5.6.2Implicit
      • 5.6.3Mixed
      • 5.6.4Reduced explicit
      • 5.6.5No feedback
    • 5.7Procedure
    • 5.8Scoring
  • 6.Results
  • 7.Discussion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 December 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.3.15yil
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