A number of theories of second language L2 acquisition acknowledge a role for explicit L2 knowledge. However, the testing of these theories remains problematic because of the lack of a widely accepted means for measuring L2 explicit knowledge. This article seeks to address this lacuna by examining L2 explicit knowledge from two perspectives.…

A problem facing investigations of implicit and explicit learning is the lack of valid measures of second language implicit and explicit knowledge. This paper attempts to establish operational definitions of these two constructs and reports a psychometric study of a battery of tests designed to provide relatively independent measures of them.…

This article reviews previous studies of the effects of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on SLA, pointing out a number of methodological problems. It then reports on a new study of the effects of these two types of corrective feedback on the acquisition of past tense -ed. In an experimental design (two experimental groups and a control…