Instructing English-as-a-first-language learners. A study published in the journal A...

Instructing English-as-a-first-language learners. A study published in the journal Applied Linguistics (Feb. 2014) investigated the effects of implicit and explicit classroom interventions during the instruction of Japanese to Englishas- a-first-language (EFL) students. EFL students at a Japanese university were divided into implicit (n = 44) and explicit (n = 37) groups. [Note: Implicit instruction emphasized reading comprehension only, while explicit instruction included both deductive and inductive activities designed to bring learners’ attention to rules and patterns.] Following an instruction period, all students were tested on their ability to use epistemic terms such as think, maybe, seem, and may in an essay. A summary of the epistemic type scores for the two groups of EFL students are provided in the table on p. 393.