Exploring Automatization Processes

Abstract

* The applied linguistics literature of the past 10 years has given a prominent place to various interrelated questions about the teaching of L2 grammar rules. Although there is evidence now for the usefulness of focus on form (see, e.g., Spada & Lightbown, 1993; White, Spada, Lightbown, & Ranta, 1991, for classroom studies; Doughty, 1991, for laboratory research) and explicit rule teaching (see, e.g., Scott, 1989, for classroom research; Alanen, 1992; DeKeyser, 1995; N. Ellis, 1993; Robinson, in press, for laboratory studies), no research so far has tried to provide any fine-grained empirical evidence for or against the existence of automatization processes in L2 grammar learning. In other words, in spite of the practical importance of this issue, there is no good evidence of what can be done to take students from explicit rule knowledge to spontaneous, fast, and relatively error-free rule use. This brief report presents the rationale for and the results of a pilot study that tries to document in detail how automatization takes place as the result of different kinds of intensive practice.

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