comment

Lexical priming and explicit grammar

in foreign language instruction
Pawe Scheffler

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This is a feature in which individuals are invited to express their personal, and
sometimes controversial, views on professional issues. These views are not
necessarily those of the Editor, the Editorial Panel, or the Publisher. Reaction
to Comment features is welcome in the form of a letter to the Editor or a
Readers Respond article.

Introduction This commentary has been inspired by Michael Hoeys (2014) plenary
lecture at the Annual International IATEFL Conference in Harrogate in
April of this year. In his lecture, Hoey attempted to revitalize two old
approaches to foreign language (FL) instruction: Michael Lewiss (1993)
Lexical Approach and Stephen Krashens (1982) Monitor Model. By
providing psycholinguistic evidence in their support and by grounding
them in linguistic theory, Hoey (ibid.) tried to demonstrate that both
models are safe to use by teachers. In this commentary, however, it is
argued that even if Hoeys linguistic theory of lexical priming is correct,
lexis should still be subordinated to grammar in FL teaching.

Lexical priming According to Hoey (ibid.), the mechanism that drives language
and FL instruction acquisition is lexical priming. In short, whenever a language learner
encounters a word, he or she subconsciously registers its lexical,
grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic associations. These associations
are stored in the mental lexicon and are later drawn upon in language
use: for example words encountered in combination are stored as
combinations and are then reproduced as combinations.
In Hoeys (ibid.) view, both Lewiss (ibid.) Lexical Approach and
Krashens (ibid.) Monitor Model are consistent with an account of
language acquisition and use based on lexical priming. As for the
former, Hoey (ibid.) says that Lewis is correct in treating grammar as the
output of lexis and in recognizing that the successful language learner
is someone who can recognise, understand and produce lexical phrases
as ready-made chunks (ibid.: PowerPoint slide 3). From this, it follows
that in teaching, the emphasis needs to be on vocabulary in context and
particularly on fixed expressions in speech (ibid.: PowerPoint slide 3).

ELT Journal Volume 69/1 January 2015; doi:10.1093/elt/ccu044  93

The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Advance Access publication August 19, 2014
 When vocabulary is learnt in context, grammar is picked up naturally.
When grammar is learnt separately, little (useful) vocabulary is picked
up. With respect to Krashens model, it correctly recognizes the ancillary
nature of grammar and rightly recommends that learners need to
be exposed to naturally occurring data that interests them and slightly
extends them (ibid.: PowerPoint slides 119 and 97). In this way, learners
can subconsciously pick up various textual associations.
The argument, then, is that the centrality of lexis in language acquisition
and language use should be reflected in its centrality in FL teaching. In
principle, lexical associations could be mastered by FL learners in two
ways: either through the same subconscious mechanism that operates in
L1 acquisition or through lexically oriented conscious study of language
material. It seems, however, that given the constraints that apply to a
typical FL classroom neither of the two is a viable option.

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In first language acquisition, children are generally exposed to large
amounts of input: Cameron-Faulkner, Lieven, and Tomasellos (2003:
866) estimation is that every day English L1 children hear around
7,000 utterances. These utterances include about 2,000 questions,
about 1,500 fragments, about 1,000 copulas, and about 400 complex
utterances (ibid.). If this estimation is correct, then in their first
five years of life children encounter roughly 12,500,000 meaningful
utterances in communicative contexts. No classroom input can come
close to this amount of linguistic data.
The second option for mastering lexical associations is a conscious
study of chunks, fixed expressions, collocations, etc. These could be
first provided in context by teachers and then committed to memory
by learners. It appears, however, that making such study the basis
of FL teaching would be inappropriate. As Pawley and Syder (1983:
213) observed, native speakers know hundreds of thousands of
memorized sequences, some of which can be complete sentential
units, for example: Who do you think you are? Do you think I was born
yesterday? (ibid.). In the classroom setting, committing to memory
even a small subset of these would be a daunting task.

From explicit Thus, if L2 learners are to succeed in the task of FL learning and
grammar to lexical become competent L2 users, classroom time should be used as
priming effectively as possible and the cognitive learning load should be reduced
as much as possible. Such a reduction can be achieved if we focus more
on grammatical systems rather than lists of lexical phrases. As Brumfit
(1980: 1034) suggested, grammatical accounts of language systems
are often used as the foundation of language teaching because such
accounts are very economical and the systems are generative.
Further, there is recent empirical evidence that explicit grammar
teaching can be made to work very well. Spada and Tomitas (2010)
meta-analysis showed that such instruction is more effective than
implicit instruction for both simple and complex English grammar
structures. These results were obtained on both immediate and
delayed post-tests and the largest effect size was found on spontaneous
response measures that followed instruction on complex forms.

94 Pawe Scheffler
 The types of explicit grammatical instruction that were investigated in the
studies meta-analysed by Spada and Tomita (ibid.) included explanations
of grammar rules, L1/L2 contrasts, and metalinguistic feedback. These
treatments helped learners to produce unplanned L2 output, which is the
goal that many L2 learners want to achieve. It seems, then, that we now
have solid empirical evidence that excluding teacher-imposed explicit
grammar explanations, as, for example, Lewis (op.cit.: 149) proposes, is
misguided: adult learners can benefit from an approach to classroom
teaching which capitalizes on their ability to absorb and practise explicit
knowledge. Two important questions, however, remain.
First, as Spada and Tomita (op.cit.: 287) themselves admit, it is not clear
what mechanism is responsible for the improvement in the learners
spontaneous performance. They consider two possible scenarios. In
the first scenario, the improvement could be attributed to learners

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converting explicit knowledge into implicit knowledge, which clearly
contradicts Krashens (op.cit.: 10) non-interface position, in which
learning and acquisition are distinct and independent. The second
possibility is that the learners improved as a result of speeded-up
application of explicit knowledge. This, again, cannot be reconciled with
Krashens (op.cit.: 83) claim that conscious knowledge of rules () does
not initiate utterances but is consistent with Paradiss (2009) account,
in which efficient application of explicit knowledge can be the basis of
fluent L2 performance.
Second, how to include lexical phenomena like collocations and chunking
in the instruction process needs to be investigated. A possible solution
could be a combination of grammatically oriented presentation and
lexically oriented practice. This could involve explicit grammar explanations
(in context) followed by production practice intended to establish lexical
associations between items. Such practice would be consistent with Hoey
(2005: 187), who speculates that producing language may be a significant
factor in reinforcing primings or even creating new ones.
So, for example, the teacher could present and explain the English
present perfect as a grammatical category and then provide practice in
the form of meaningful bilingual drills (Butzkamm and Caldwell 2009)
or communicative drills (DeKeyser 1998). In such drills, the most
frequent lexical instantiations of the present perfect could be drawn
upon to establish links between them. These links could be further
strengthened in purely communicative activities following the drills and
in the exposure outside the classroom, which is something that teachers
should very strongly encourage their learners to seek.
Through the procedure outlined above, we can provide learners with
both explicit and implicit instruction. In the case of the former, the
goals would be linguistic awareness, proceduralization of explicit
knowledge, and lexical priming. The latter would reinforce primings
established in class and gradually create new ones. In general terms,
the above account is consistent with MacWhinneys (1997: 278) view,
which is that [s]tudents who receive explicit instruction, as well as
implicit exposure to forms, would seem to have the best of both worlds.

Comment: Lexical priming and explicit grammar 95

References
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96 Pawe Scheffler
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The author
Pawe Scheffler is a Researcher and Lecturer at the
Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University
in Pozna, Poland. His current research interests
include second language acquisition, modern
English grammar, and corpus linguistics. He has
published in a variety of journals both in Poland and
abroad. He also writes language teaching materials
for Polish learners of English.
Email: spawel@wa.amu.edu.pl