The Effect Of Explicit And Implicit Instruction On Chinese Efl Learners’ Use Of Epistemic Stance Markers: A Comparative Study

The research topic on the effect of explicit instruction and implicit instruction on EFL learners has aroused wide attention among scholars in the field of SLA for many years. Which instructional treatment is more effective? Should English teaching pay more attention to form or to meaning? These questions have become hot topics for the past three decades. To find out the answers to these questions, scholars abroad have conducted a great deal of fruitful empirical studies based on relevant theories. Domestic studies in this aspect, however, still remain at the initial stage, lacking forceful achievements.This study, based on Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis, through a 18-week teaching experiment, was designed to examine the effect of explicit instruction and implicit instruction on Chinese EFL learners’ use of epistemic stance markers, particularly, the differences concerning features and effect of the two ways of instruction on learners at different proficiency levels. The subjects were 90 sophomores from a local university in Shandong Province, 45 of them are physics majors forming the experimental group and the other 45 are chemistry majors forming the control group. During the experimental process, the experimental group received explicit instruction with detailed explanation of the epistemic stance markers that appearing in the teaching material, whereas implicit instruction was given to the control group at the same time. The experimental data came from three writing tests: pre-test, post-test and delayed post-test. After each test, as soon as the essays were collected, experienced teachers were invited to check and calculate the number of the epistemic stance markers used in the essays. The data obtained from the three tests were analyzed and compared with the help of Excel and SPSS 19.0.According to the final research results, there is no significant difference between the experimental group and the control group in the pretest. In contrast, the performance of the experimental group with explicit instruction is significantly better than that of the control group with implicit instruction in the posttest. Though there is slight decrease of the explicit group in the delayed posttest, its overall effect is still better than the implicit group. Moreover, there are individual differences among the two groups. That is, the performance of the three sub-groups in the experimental group is better than that of the control group respectively. However, compared to the experimental group, whose sub-groups perform not so well than the control group, all sub-groups’ performance of the control group has improved steadily in the delayed posttest. The results of the experiment indicate that the overall effect of explicit instruction is better than implicit instruction, while in terms of the durability and stability of the instructed target language points, the effect of implicit instruction is much better. Therefore, the study argues that learners at high proficiency level get used to explicit instruction, but for learners at middle and low proficiency levels, the integration of explicit instruction and implicit instruction is more helpful.Of course, due to the research condition and time limit, there are still some limitations of this study, such as failure to consider the gender differences and a smaller experimental period. These are the very points that need to be further made up. However, this experimental study throws light on the choice of instructional treatment and ways to improve the quality of English teaching in EFL learning environment in China.