The Effect of Timing and Learners’ Age on Implicit and Explicit Grammar Learning

This study explored the effect of timing of feedback (i.e., immediate vs. delayed) and learners’ age (adolescent vs. adult) on the development of English regular past tense structure. Two intermediate classes of adolescent and adult learners were selected as the participants. Participants were asked to carry out two narrative tasks which set the context for the provision of corrective feedback. The selected target structure was the regular past tense –ed feature. The untimed grammaticality judgment test was used to measure explicit knowledge development and elicited imitation test was employed for the measurement of implicit learning. These tests were administered at the beginning of the study as pre-test, immediately after the provision of immediate feedback and again immediately after the provision of delayed corrective feedback. The results demonstrated that whereas both adolescent and adult learners improved their implicit knowledge after the delayed feedback, explicit knowledge was improved in adult learners after both immediate and delayed feedback but in delayed feedback in adolescent learners. The implications of the findings are discussed in light of theories of second language acquisition.