英语论文网

Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Introduction 
A  key  issue  in  second  language  pedagogy  is  whether  the  learner  should  be  taught  to approach the learning task consciously as an intellectual exercise, or whether he/she should be encouraged to avoid thinking about the language and absorb it intuitively.  The former teaching strategy is usually called “explicit” and the latter is called “implicit”. Accordingly, the effect of the two ways of language instruction has been heatedly discussed for many years in the field of Second  Language  Acquisition  (SLA).  Traditionally,  explicit  instruction  has  been  considered more  effective  than  implicit  instruction  based  on  the  requirement  of  the  English  teaching syllabus in foreign language teaching environment. With regard to this, present second language teachers  give  much  emphasis  on  the  form  of  a  second  language  rather  than  on  its  meaning. However, the effect of explicit instruction proves to be less significant than implicit instruction in  terms  of  the  long-term  retention  of  the  target  language.  In  order  to  put  second  language teaching in a more effective way, various studies are undertaken to investigate the effectiveness of  explicit  and  implicit  instruction.  The  results  of  these  studies,  however,  cannot  reach  an agreement. Thus, further studies with regard to the potential of explicit instruction and implicit instruction are important and necessary. Epistemic stance markers, as important element of English pragmatics, are used to state a person’s  comments  on  the  status  of  information  in  a  proposition  in  both  spoken  and  written language.  In English writing, especially in  argumentative essays, epistemic stance markers are widely  adopted  to  mark  certainty,  actuality,  precision,  or  limitation.  Thus,  learners’  reasonable use  of  epistemic  stance  markers  is  an  efficient  way  to  test  the  effectiveness  of  explicit  and implicit instruction in EFL learning and teaching.  Therefore, this study is designed to examine the  effect of  explicit and implicit instruction on EFL learners’ use of epistemic stance markers in their written language with hope to throw light on the above problems, and to find out a better way of English language instruction.  
..........

1.2 Background of the Study 
Language instruction is a very important aspect in the process of second language learning and teaching. In order to improve English teaching efficiency and explain language rules more clearly  in  China,  English  teachers  tend  to  focus  on  explicit  rule  explanation.  However,  the learning  effect  is  not  very  obvious  in  terms  本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。