“A comparison of Implicit and Explicit methods in English L2 : evidence from Interrogative and Negative structures in child , adolescents and adults beginner language learners”

This experimental study wants to compare two L2 methods of acquisition: the implicit method and the explicit method. In particular, the data will be focused on the interrogative and negative structures, which seem to be more difficult than affirmative ones. In these years, a large number of studies, have always been focused on the explicit method because, as Karen Lichtman (2013) says, it is the only one which is proposed for adult students. Since this method doesn’t allow the student to reach the mother tongue level which a child does being exposed to a second language, the question is : if one proposes an implicit or a natural method, which doesn’t mean going abroad in the country of the language one wants to learn, is it possible to reach an higher level than the one reached with the explicit method? The data in the present study, comes from the monthly observation of the linguistic path of six students of an English school which proposes a natural method of acquisition. However, 3 of these students are attending the normal course. In this way, these two groups are compared. In one of his famous study, Naom Chomsky (1975,1981), proposes the nativist theory which says that the acquisition of the language is an active process of rules discovery and of hypothesis checking which is possible thanks to an innate nature of the language. Moreover, Pinker (1994) affirms that the language is an instinct. Superficially considering these statements, one can speculate that a human being, which is innately provided with this ability, can learn a language in respective whichever his/her age is. However, this ability is constrained by the effects of a “temporal window” a critical period (Lennerberg 1967) after which, the natural acquisition of a second language unavoidably decreases. Therefore, the positive expectations for this method are very low. The results will show that the effects of the implicit method are lower with respect to the explicit method which is the one that records the highest progress independently of the age of the subject. Moreover, this study will show the positive implicit group’s results after a more explicit path.