Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Research Rationale Due to the popularity of communicative methodology in the late 1970s, grammarinstruction was once ignored in second language acquisition (SLA). However, formalinstruction was called for to improve learner's level of accuracy in recent years. For atleast 40 years, SLA researches have centered on the type and place of grammaticalinstruction within language learning (Ellis，2017). There is now convincing indirectand direct evidence to support the teaching of grammar by numerous scholars (Ellis，2017). For instance，Burgess and Etherington (2017) claimed that grammar is "anindispensable element of language use and language leaming”.Therefore，grammar iswelcoming its revival and receiving its recognition for what it has always been(Thombury, 1998).The controversy about the effectiveness of formal instruction hasbecome one of the most important parts in SLA and the debate mainly centered on thequestion of whether to teach grammar and how to teach.In the field of SLA, various debates remain related to methods of grammarinstruction for SLA. Despite these conflicting issues, when second or foreignlanguage teachers demonstrate new rules or about L2 grammar structures, they havecommonly applied two specific types of grammar teaching methods: explicit orimplicit. For this reason, most debates about which instructional approach to grammarcan facilitate more correct comprehension and accurate production on grammaracquisition for SLA have been concentrated on these two instructional approaches togrammar among researches.For the lack of English environment, explicit learning has long been practicedand regarded as an essential or even helpful method for Chinese EFL(English-as-a-foreign-language) learners. In spite of the positive effect that the explicit approachhas demonstrated on grammar knowledge, it is inadequate in the development of students' communicative competence. In addition，英语论文题目，the fluency of language productionmight be impaired by the overuse of explicit conscious learning strategies includinggrammar for practice (Alanen, 1995; Rosa and O'Neill, 1999; Benati, 2017; Ellis N.，英语论文题目，2017). This argument can be proved by the phenomenon that a large proportion ofcollege students fail to speak or write few sentences without making mistakes afterlearning English and its basic grammar rules for at least 6 years. On the contrary,English native speakers can use their language correctly and flexibly without makingany effort intentionally. It seems to indicate that explicit grammar knowledge fromexplicit teaching cannot guarantee the correct grammar forms in practical use. On theother hand, implicit approach is also found inadequate in the cultivation of student'scommunicative performance, especially in FLT (foreign-language-teaching)environment.In sum, due to conflicting debates on two different types of grammarinstructional approaches, explicit instruction versus implicit instruction，it can be animportant work to investigate the comparative effects of these two methods inChinese university-level EFL learners. The investigation is conducted by focusing onone grammatical point，relative clause，in order to investigate which instructionalapproach, explicit or implicit instruction, is more effective for the correct judgment ofthe grammatical point for English learners at the same stage. This will provideinformation as to what is the better way to help Chinese university-lev |
