A Correlation Study Of English Implicit, Explicit Grammatical Knowledge And Language Proficiency Of Non-English Major Undergraduates

Since1970s when the distinction was made between implicit and explicit second language (L2) learning, a large number of researches have been carried out on implicit and explicit learning, instruction, knowledge and the interface issue in both experimental cognitive psychology field and second language acquisition (SLA) field as well. There has been a lot of controversy among literature with regard to the measuring of the two types of knowledge. Aside from that, the outcomes of studies on to what extent implicit and explicit knowledge contribute to L2proficiency development have been diverse and inconsistent. Besides, hardly any empirical studies have been made in an attempt to investigate the English learners in the setting of China.Therefore, this study was intended to find out the composition of second language knowledge by using several tests originally invented and tested by R.Ellis, and to explore the relationship between grammatical knowledge and general language proficiency among L2learners in the context of China. An empirical study was carried out, involving284non-English major sophomores as subjects in a provincial university in Jilin, Northeast of China. The Timed Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) was applied to measure implicit knowledge while the Metalinguistic Knowledge Test measured explicit knowledge. A set of Spearman Rank Correlation Analysis were adopted to examine the relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge between English language proficiency which was tested with College English Test (CET) Band-4. The major findings are as follows.First, it was found that the language learners in this study have not effectively internalized the L2knowledge. From the score perspective, those learners do better in explicit grammatical knowledge test than they do in implicit grammatical knowledge test. Generally speaking, the learners’explicit knowledge scores exceed their implicit knowledge on almost every grammatical item. Yet part of the knowledge has been taken in as implicit knowledge. This result has, to some degree, provided support to the weak interface position proposed by Rod Ellis. Second, as for the second research question on the relationship between implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge and general English proficiency, two major findings come into sight. For one thing, both implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge contribute to general L2proficiency. Non-English majors’explicit English knowledge is in stronger correlation with their English proficiency. For another, both implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge plays an important part in listening and reading while explicit knowledge contributes more to the performance in comprehensive English and writing than implicit knowledge does.