Effect of explicit and implicit FFI on EFL learner's implicit and explicit knowledge of simple and difficult morphosyntactic features

This study investigated the relative effects of explicit and implicit form-focused instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of four simple and difficult morphosyntactic features as assessed by explicit and implicit outcome measures. Four tests were utilized to assess L2 learners'' acquisition: elicited oral imitation, timed and untimed grammaticality judgment, and metalinguistic knowledge tests. A pretest and two posttests were administered to 120 low pre-intermediate learners immediately and three weeks after the instructional treatments. Durable effects of FFI were found for simple and difficult language forms on both measures of explicit and implicit L2 knowledge. More specifically, the present study indicated that explicit FFI was significantly more beneficial for simple language features chosen according to their degree of difficulty based on the explicit knowledge criteria and implicit FFI was significantly more beneficial for simple language features selected according to their degree of difficulty based on the implicit knowledge criteria. The findings may promise implications for our understanding of the efficacy of explicit and implicit FFI on L2 learners’ controlled and spontaneous use of simple and difficult forms at early stages of L2 acquisition.