Article Analysis

Linguistics is relatively a broad field of study. One of the field’s interests is second

language acquisition. As it is important to understand the process of the second language

acquisition and how could it be facilitated, research studies are conducted on learners of a second

language. One example of a journal that publishes research studies in this topic is “Studies In

Second Language Acquisition”. The article to be analyzed is published in this journal and has

the title “Implicit And Explicit Corrective Feedback And The Acquisition Of L2 Grammar”

(Ellis, Loewen & Erlam, 2006). The article reveals an empirical study on the effects of implicit

and explicit corrective feedback on the acquisition of second language grammar past tense.

Unlike the preceding studies, this study includes tests that truly assess the implicit and explicit

knowledge of low-intermediate learners of English as a second language by proceeding at

variable times; before the instructions, one day after the instructions and two weeks later. The

results show that learners benefit more from the explicit corrective feedback (Ellis et al., 2006).

The type of this article is a research study that follows the IMRD structure. The authors

firstly present an introduction, in which they identify problems in previous studies’

methodologies and state their purpose for this study. After that, they include in the method

section the identification of the participants, reasons for choosing the target structure, full

explanation of the instructional materials and procedures as well as the testing instruments and

procedures. Then, they disclose the results of all tests in details using tables. Lastly, these results

are discussed and analyzed in details. The use of tables is significant to show results for each

test. The data in the study can be considered a mix between qualitative and quantitative. The
article also included an abstract at the beginning and wrapped up with a conclusion and several

notes at the end (Ellis et al., 2006).

The object of study for this article is the relative impact of implicit and explicit types of

corrective feedback on the acquisition of second language grammar. The study aimed to provide

an accurate comparison between implicit corrective feedback as recasts of the parts where

learners make mistakes, and explicit feedback as metalinguistic explanations by repeating the

learners' error and then giving the rule in the target language without telling the correct form.

According to Ellis et al., the exigence is the limitation of previous research. The tests carried out

in these studies were focused on the learners’ explicit knowledge of the second language and did

not accurately measure the implicit knowledge. This study is important because it compares the

effectiveness of explicit and implicit corrective feedback (Ellis et al., 2006).

According to Swales and Feak (2012), the article can be divided into three moves. What

has been covered in the beginning of the introduction can be considered move one (a). The

authors stated definitions for the concepts discussed in the article and gave examples of similar

studies implemented before. The authors started getting to move one (b) by relating to previous

studies’ discussions, “Schmid (1994) stated that implicit and explicit learning and implicit and

explicit knowledge are related but distinct concepts that need to be separated” (Ellis et al., 2006.

p. 340). The previous studies were reviewed under the subheading “previous research on

corrective feedback”. In “the main limitation of the research to date lies in the method of

testing.”, the authors started move two by stating their exigence. In the next paragraph, they

started move three (b) by listing a question that the research will investigate. Then they got to

move three (a), where their purpose was stated “ this study was designed to provide precise

comparison between implicit and explicit corrective feedback by operationalizing these

constructs in terms of (a) partial recasts of those portions of learners’ utterances that contained an

error and (b) metalinguistic information about the target rule but the correct target language form

was not provided”.

Generally, articles in the field of Linguistics, including this article, follow the American

Psychological Association (APA) style of citation. In the field of Linguistics, in order to write

such a research study article, it is important to be acquainted with most of the research studies in

the field which helps recognizing the structure of its research papers and finding exigence for

new studies.

References

Ellis, R., Loewen, S., & Erlam, R. (2006). IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT CORRECTIVE

FEEDBACK AND THE ACQUISITION OF L2 GRAMMAR. Studies in Second

Language Acquisition, 28(2), 339-368. doi:10.1017/S0272263106060141

Swales, J. M.,& Feak, C. B (2012). Academic Writing for Graduate Students, 3rd Edition:

Essential Tasks and Skills. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.