As an example, we should use what he coined as chunks or formulaic sentences, like 'I don't know' to help the students begin building their knowledge and right off the bat the teacher should work on interaction or output and not so much on grammar or input. Thus we would help the student in the following ways:

We help to build fluency.

Ready made sentences mean ready to use and easy to remember.

Rules can eventually learned from the Chunks

For point 2 he was talking about the differences between Semantic meaning and Pragmatic meaning. The Semantic meaning would deal with lexical items, while pragmatic meanings would express highly contextualized meanings through communication. I thought about this one for two reasons, originally it confused the hell out of me and second when it dawned on me what it meant I discovered that I was already using this process. You see pragmatic learning requires the learners to use the language in a real and 'contextualized' meaning, so when they are set in practical situations that allow them to understand the usage and the meanings of the words. This could relate to some of my ESLog lessons, a good example would be the Problem and Solutions work sheets that I adapted from another persons lesson plan so that they where inundated with useful language to use in situations as well as being asked to think of their own examples. Or having my students do presentation that forces them to use what they have learned in a 20 minute speech or lesson.


Teachers should use focused tasks that require the learners to comprehend and process specific Grammatik structures during input or to produce structure during the output.


Implicit Knowledge

Second Nature

Habitual knowledge gained from use and practice

Explicit Knowledge

Learning/studying and not gained through practical experience

While doing a Thesis in university I interviewed a drunk driving hit and run victim named John. Without getting to involved in his story what had happened was he was hit and a blood vessel in his brain ruptured causing him to lose the ability to retain NEW memories. When I first met him it was through a support group that setup the meeting for me and before meeting him I had to mail him a picture as well as an EXACT meeting place so he could find me. On the day of the meeting I worried that he had forgotten, but in fat he arrived right on time with a picture of me in his hand and a very confused look. You see they had explained to him what the meeting was about yet he had forgotten by the time he arrived. I was surprised to learn that he had in fact driven to the meeting place and that the place we met at was where he met his ex-wife. Through John I am able to understand the difference between Implicit and Explicit knowledge, he could remember everything before the accident, but everyday after was a '50 first dates' day; Implicit is second-nature, Explicit is learnt and easily forgotten.


Figuring out things like the order or sequence of acquisition relating to implicit knowledge. While also trying to adopt a zero grammar approach and waiting for the students to show you what structure THEY are ready to acquire. After learning their syllabus we would be able to begin teaching using explicit knowledge.

This seems to be his transition period from the implicit to the explicit and the major recommendation was to use reading. This will tie in later with Marc Helgesen's talk and thus I will leave it at that.


I adamantly agreed with his opinion on this matter and I have always thought that they best way to learn a language is through complete and utter immersion. A good example is my wife who has learned English by being with me everyday and I have never taught her a single lesson in English. So she know has lots of implicit knowledge and it also so apparently clear that she is missing a lot of the explicit knowledge.

So if we simplify the input while maximizing the L2


I hate to say it but this is the most obvious, yet misunderstood. The output should be in controlled exercise that promote the use of chunks that can be quickly assimilated into implicit knowledge, rather than promoting extended talking which should only come when the students 'syllabus' is apparent to the teacher and the learning is ready for this style of acquisition.


This is why I disagree with the idea of promoting extensive reading. Sure it is easy to build lessons around reading and speaking about the reading afterwards, sort of like a book club, but meaning and enjoyment is relative to each person and can quickly leads to boredom, confusion or even teacher laziness. Like I said before, without really knowing it I have been promoting a controlled learning environment and I think this allows for the most successful opportunity for output and interaction with other learners and having something to guide you can very often bolster the learner's confidence.


You can approach this analytically or memory based, either way the idea is to listen to what the learners are doing and saying and correcting them or encouraging them along the way.


Personally this just lends credence to the idea of using presentations and controlled assignments in my classrooms. This is the third of Rod's points that I agreed with completely and I would promote the use of direct assessment that would lead to a closed outcome or else using external ratings, but either way if the assessment is not as effective as the teaching then the students will not be upgrading their internal syllabus.

In my opinion I found Rod Ellis expressed some very interesting points, but the questions they raised could be even more helpful in assessing how a Teacher should teach and in what area/role they are the most proficient. Social linguistic form seems to be one of the best steps forward in this society, but at the same time the worst step back. Seeing and learning English in everyday life helps to promote the everyday usage, but also the idea of using hangul to pronounce the English is a step back which builds a dependency on their own language, rather than the acquired language. This could imply a major role for society to ensure the use of English in a Romanized manner, while trying to deal with the loss, or feeling of loss of their identity and culture. For example the Kookmin KB issue that arouse last year is a prime example.