Atomicity & Countability in Linguistically-Informed Instruction

While the literature shows that there is strong support for the effects of explicit instruction on explicit language knowledge, there has been little research on the effects of different types of explicit instruction on language acquisition. This study attempts to bridge the gap between Instructed Second Language Acquisition and Generative Second Language Acquisition by creating an instructional context that employs Generative theories and findings in order to teach L2-English articles and noun types. The study investigates L1-Mandarin learners in three different instructional contexts (linguistically-informed instruction, traditional instruction, and no extra instruction) acquiring countable and uncountable nouns in an indefinite-singular article context in L2 English. As measured by an elicited-sentence imitation task and an acceptability judgment task at pre-test, immediate posttest, and three-week-delayed post-test, the results find that learners receiving explicit instruction on the semantic features needing to be reassembled make the greatest gains over the duration of the study. These findings suggest that if linguistically-informed instruction were implemented in a systematic way throughout an entire grammar course, it may lead to greater linguistic gains in a shorter amount of time.