Abstract

Project Title: The Impact of Explicit L1 Knowledge on the Retention of Grammar Concepts in Beginning L2 Students
Student: Emily Keiser
Mentor: Dr. David Counselman

In order to better understand the impact of explicit knowledge on beginning second language learners, it is important to understand how modern mental processing theories, input theories, and the definitions of implicit and explicit information aid in the overall understanding of the idea of learning (or acquiring) language in adult speakers. It is the knowledge of both of these concepts which allows the existence of better second language teaching strategies. This research explores the history and development of various processing and input theories, the definition of explicit and implicit information, and different learning strategies in order to construct and propose an experiment on measuring if and how explicit language teaching in a first language has an impact on the overall acquisition and retention of a specific grammar topic in a second language.