英语词汇及双重否定结构显-隐性学习的实证性研究--毕业论文.doc

中文题目_英语词汇及双重否定结构显/隐性学习的实证性
研究
外文题目An Empirical Study on Explicit and Implicit
Learning of English Vocabulary and Double Negatives

姓 名
学 号
导 师
研究方向 第二语言习得
专 业 英语语言学及应用语言学
系 别 英语学院

2015年 4 月 15 日

北京外国语大学学位论文原创性声明和使用授权说明

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Acknowledgements
This thesis could not be finished without the help and support of many people who are gratefully acknowledged here.
At the very first, I'm honored to express my deepest gratitude to my dedicated supervisor, with whose guidance I could have worked out this thesis. She has offered me valuable ideas, suggestions and criticisms with her profound knowledge. Her patience and kindness are greatly appreciated. I have learnt from her a lot not only about thesis writing, but also the professional ethics. I'm very much obliged to her efforts of helping me complete the thesis.
What's more, I wish to extend my thanks to my classmates, Wang Mengyi and Jiang Siyu, who never failed to give me great encouragement and suggestions. Besides, I’m quite grateful for all my students in Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. Without their cooperation, I couldn’t have finished this thesis.
At last, I would like to thank my family for their support all the way from the very beginning of my study. I am thankful to all my family members for their thoughtfulness and encouragement.

摘要
二语习得的学者对显性和隐性学习已经做了很多研究。早期的研究通常区分开这两个领域，强调显性学习和隐性学习的不同。但是，随着更深入的研究，许多研究者开始寻求两者各自的优势或把两者结合起来。显性和隐性学习在不同方面对习得过程都会产生影响，并且两者具有相互依存、相互转化和相互补充的紧密关系。
本研究旨在对词汇和语法结构显性及隐性学习的不同进行实证研究。两组学生参与了实验。实验共分为四部分：前测，实验处理，测试，后测。前测是为了检验受试者是否已知实验中所用的目标词汇和语法结构。实验处理阶段分为两部分，第一组学生通过教师讲解对目标词汇进行显性学习，第二组学生通过教师讲解对目标双重否定结构进行显性学习。测试包括一篇阅读理解和句子翻译，阅读理解用于隐性学习，句子翻译用于观察学生通过显性策略和隐性策略对英语词汇和双重否定结构的学习。后测是为了研究对英语词汇和双重否定结构显性学习和隐性学习的持续效果。最后，对英语词汇和双重否定结构的显性学习和隐性学习作出了比较。结果表明，在显性和隐性学习策略中，学生都更容易进行词汇学习，并且，对词汇的记忆力具有相对更长的持久性。然而，学生很难通过隐性学习来进行双重否定结构的学习，而且对此结构的记忆持久性相对较短。

关键词：显性学习，隐性学习，词汇，双重否定，测试

Abstract
Explicit and implicit learning have long been researched by scholars of second language acquisition. The early studies mostly divide the two areas, emphasizing the difference between explicit and implicit learning. However, with further exploration, many researchers start to search for the advantage of each one or join the two together. It has been realized that explicit and implicit learning both have influence on acquisition process, although in different aspects, and the two possess a close relationship of mutual reliance, mutual transformation and mutual complement.
This research is devoted to study the differences between implicit and explicit learning on vocabulary and grammatical structures. Two groups of students are involved. Then the experiment is divided into four parts: a pre-test, the treatment, a following test and a post-test. The purpose of the pre-test is to test whether the target vocabulary and structure used in the experiment have already been known to the participants. The treatment is divided into two sections with students of group one being exposed to an explicit teaching methodology through elaboration on target vocabulary and student of group two being exposed to an explicit teaching methodology through illustration on target double negative structures. The following test provides a reading passage for implicit learning and sentence translation to observe their learning of English vocabulary and double negatives through both explicit strategy and implicit strategy. The post-test is to research the posterior effects of explicit learning and implicit learning of English vocabulary and double negatives. Finally, a comparison was made between explicit learning and implicit learning of English vocabulary and double negatives. The results show that vocabulary is easier for students to learn through both explicit and implicit strategies and it has a comparatively longer retention in memory. However, double negatives can be hardly learned through implicit learning and they have relatively short duration in memory.

Key words: Explicit learning, Implicit learning, Vocabulary, Double negatives, Test

Table of Contents
北京外国语大学学位论文原创性声明和使用授权说明 i
Acknowledgements ii
摘要 iii
Abstract iv
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
Chapter 2 Literature Review 2
2.1 Studies on explicit and implicit learning 2
2.1.1 Theories of explicit and implicit learning 3
2.1.2 Empirical studies of explicit and implicit acquisition 6
2.1.3 The implicit and explicit learning mechanisms in second language teaching 10
Chapter 3 Methodology 14
3.1 Research design 14
3.2 Participants 15
3.3 Instruments 16
3.3.1 Target forms 16
3.3.2 Material for tests 19
3.4 Procedure 20
3.4.1 Pre-test 20
3.4.2 Test 21
3.4.3 Post-test 22
3.5 Data analysis 23
3.5.1 Evaluation standard 23
3.5.2 Statistical analysis of data 24
Chapter 4 Results and Discussion 25
4.1 Analysis of Data 25
4.1.1 Results of the Pre-test 25
4.1.2 Results of the Test 26
4.1.3 Results of the Post-test 29
4.1.4 A comparison between results of the test and the post-test within each class 30
4.2 Discussion of the Results 32
Chapter 5 Conclusions 35
References 37
Appendices 39
Appendix 1 39
Appendix 2 40
Appendix 3 43

iv

Chapter 1 Introduction
Implicit and explicit learning mechanisms have received increasing attention in second language acquisition. The early research mostly divides the two areas, emphasizing the difference between explicit and implicit learning. However, with further exploration, many researchers start to search for the advantages of each one or join the two together because they realize the two mechanisms have interrelated influences. Early studies on explicit and implicit learning mainly focus on listening, reading and grammar. Some cover the field of vocabulary acquisition. However, most empirical research is confined to either vocabulary or grammar acquisition. Few study both vocabulary and grammar to make a comparison between different structures through explicit and implicit learning. Therefore, the author strives to fill this gap and makes a comparative study of vocabulary and double negatives learning through explicit and implicit learning strategy to examine whether there are differences between vocabulary and double negatives learning.
In the field of vocabulary learning, increasing research has paid attention to incidental learning which belongs to implicit learning strategy. Vocabulary can be implicitly learned by students, which has been proved by many empirical studies. However, vocabulary and double negatives are two different structures with the former one being one word and the latter one being usually a grammatical structure with several words. A grammatical structure, double negatives in this case, has a higher level of difficulty in the process of learning because it requires a combination of the meaning of different words and must be comprehended as a whole. Therefore, the author wonders whether the learning strategy which applies to vocabulary learning has the same effect on double negatives learning since these two have different level of difficulty.
The author of this paper replicates the empirical study of Virginia M. Scott (1989) and strives to explore the relationship between vocabulary and double negatives learning through explicit and implicit strategies. Since double negatives is a more complicated structure than vocabulary in the process of learning, this study will generally indicate whether grammatical structures with different level of learning difficulty should be learned through different learning strategies. Moreover, it also has implications on teaching in terms of making choices about teaching strategy.

Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Studies on explicit and implicit learning
Since the1990s, there have been numerous studies on the development of Interlanguage system involving such notions as explicitness, implicitness, consciousness, subconsciousness, intentional learning, unintentional/incidental learning, and interface. Many studies have been done in the second language acquisition area on second language acquisitional pattern. For example, Selinker (1972) discusses some theoretical preliminaries for researchers concerned with the linguistic aspects of the psychology of second language learning and proposes the concept of “interlanguage”; Krashen (1981, 1983, 1985) has elaborated a theory that rests on a distinction between two independent processes, genuine learning, called “acquisition”, which is subconscious, and conscious “learning”, which is of little use in actual language production and comprehention. He also puts forward the theory of “comprehensible input hypothesis”; McLaughlin et al. (1983) states that the basic postulate of information processing theories is that humans are limited capacity processors of information; Gass & Selinker (1992) find that transfer is a psychological term and is generally regarded as the influence of some kind of learning on the others and that a lot of research reveals that anyone who wants to offer sufficient interpretation of second language acquisition has to take the critical factor---language transfer into consideration; White (1991) claims that second language learners often receive negative evidence about the target language in the form of explicit and/or implicit instruction; Doughty & Long (2003) as well as White (2003) states that second language acquisition is a growing field, encompassing a variety of perspectives on how langugaes are learned, including interlanguage pragmatics and approaches in applied linguistics, as well as generative approaches. However, The recognition of the psychological consciousness of second language learners as the central issue of second language acquisition research has merely been seen on stage for about ten years (Gass Svetics & Lemelin, 2003). With this recognition of psychological consciousness, explicit and implicit mechanisms in English learning have drawn increasing attention and are being applied in the teaching of English as well. Therefore, from both theoretical and applying perspectives, the understanding of the differences between and the functions of explicit and implicit learning mechanism is of great significance.
It has been a long time since explicit and implicit learning have been the focus of cognitive psychologists. The early studies mostly divide the two areas, emphasizing that explicit and implicit learning are two absolutely different learning processes. However, with further exploration, many researchers no longer emphasize the differences between explicit and implicit learning. Instead, they start to search for the advantages of each one or join the two together. It has been realized that explicit and implicit learning both have influence on acquisition process, although in different aspects, and the two process a close relationship of mutual reliance, mutual transformation and mutual complement.

2.1.1 Theories of explicit and implicit learning
Implicit learning of second language is the process of subconsciously learning language knowledge without paying attention to the target structure through the access to complex language materials. Children gain knowledge of intonation, semantic meaning and syntactic rules through communication with people at the beginning of their first language acquisition. Reber (1976) considers the key of implicit learning as the lack of learner consciousness about the target structure one is learning. explicit learning refers to the process in which one has to make efforts and take certain measures to finish the learning task. In second language learning, explicit learning is mainly achieved through the instruction of language rules in the classroom. Compared with implicit learning which is automatic, abstract and stable, explicit learning is relatively motivated, conscious and controllable.
From the perspective of the relationship between explicit and implicit learning, three views exist in second language acquisition research area. First, the “No interface theory” has gained popularity with Krashen as a representative. This theory aims at explaining the gap between explicit knowledge and language use. It believes that the formal in-class instruction cannot promote acquisition of implicit knowledge which is required by daily communication. Moreover, it proposes that the task of second language teaching is to provide learners with a large amount of comprehensible input instead of the explicit instruction of grammatical rules and running drills for practice. Second, the “Interface theory” has been widely accepted with Bialystok and Mclaughlin as representatives. It recognizes the mutual transformation of explicit and implicit knowledge. Besides, it believes that the learning and practice of explicit knowledge can promote the acquisition of certain language rules and that practice can compensate for the gap between explicit knowledge and language usage. Third, the neutral view which is also known as the “weak interface theory” has R. Ellis as a representative. It holds that explicit learning can help learners notice the gap between language input and language output by applying consciousness raising strategy. However, the improvement resulted from systematic practice is confined to the aspects of item learning and language fluency. In a word, the focus of the three views above is whether explicit knowledge can transform into implicit knowledge through practice. R. Ellis (2005a), Faerch& Kasper (1987) and Faerchet al. (1984) all oppose the strict distinction between explicitness and implicitness of language knowledge. Instead, they are more inclined to regarding the two as locating in a continuum because some knowledge exists in both forms at the same time. The author of this paper agrees with the “interface theory” and believes that explicit learning can promote the learning of certain language rules, especially complicated rules which cannot be noticed through implicit learning.
From the perspective of the relationship between explicit and implicit learning, several concepts are important. For example, directivity and controllability of learning motivation and distinction and duration of learning task are representative aspects.
Implicit learnin