Implicit knowledge refers to the knowledge of language (Han & Ellis, 1998).
It is unanalyzed in the sense that language learners are not aware of the implicit knowledge they are using; in other words, implicit knowledge does not involve learners’ conscious intention and that accounts for its characteristic of being
“nonverbalizable.” Implicit knowledge is made up of a collection of past experiences and it consists mainly of procedural knowledge. The acquisition of implicit knowledge is like how we acquire our first language in a natural environment.
Learners’ use of implicit knowledge is related to their spontaneous language use and learners are able to employ implicit knowledge automatically without deliberate attention on form and rules.
1.2.2 Explicit Knowledge
Explicit knowledge is the knowledge about language (Han & Ellis, 1998; Ellis, 2004). Contrary to implicit knowledge, explicit knowledge involves learners’
awareness of the language and their attention to form. As explicit knowledge can be analyzed, learners are capable of verbalizing the rules or the structure of the language they are learning by using terminology or technical language. It involves declarative
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knowledge of grammatical rules and learners usually gain access to explicit knowledge through controlled processing. That is, learners would attend to form and accuracy in language production and it is like how we learn the second or foreign language (e.g. English) in formal instruction, in which learners are taught grammar and rules of the language and they are expected to produce accurate utterances by paying attention to grammar and structure.
1.2.3 Metalinguistic Knowledge
Metalinguistic knowledge is generally defined as learners’ conscious knowledge of the formal aspects of the target language. According to Ellis (1994, p.714), “metalingual knowledge” is the “knowledge of the technical terminology needed to describe language.” On the other hand, in Roehr’s (2007, p.179) study, metalinguistic knowledge is defined as “a learner’s explicit or declarative knowledge”
which included the syntactic, morphological, lexical, pragmatic, and phonological features of L2. Roehr (2007, p.179) further defined it as “explicit knowledge about categories” as well as “relations between categories.” Alderson et al. (1996, p.2) pointed out that “…it would appear that whatever explicit knowledge consists of, it must include metalanguage, and this metalanguage must include words for grammatical categories and functions.” It seemed that explicit knowledge was a wider construct than metalinguistic knowledge and metalinguistic knowledge belonged to explicit knowledge.
While implicit knowledge is not available for verbalization and does not involve awareness, explicit knowledge can be measured through verbal reports or articulation of the rules. According to Ellis (2004), a way to measure learners’
metalanguage is through verbal reports but learners might vary in their precision and accuracy in describing a rule by themselves. Therefore the participants’ metalinguistic
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knowledge in the present study is not accessed through their verbalization, but their proper application of the rules and understanding of grammatical terminology. It is measured through the Metalinguistic Knowledge Test designed by the researcher on the basis of the test in Ellis (2005).
1.2.4 Motivation
As Brown (2000, p.160) noted, motivation was “probably the most frequently used catch-all term for explaining the success or failure of virtually any complex task.” De Bot, Lowie and Verspoor (2005, p.72) remarked that “when it comes to systematically investigating the effect of motivation on language learning, it appears that it is a rather difficult concept to operationalise.” Nonetheless, the concept appears too simplistic and general to specify the composites of motivation and the process that people may experience (Dörnyei, 2001a, 2001b). Dörnyei (2001b, p.1) asserted that
“motivation is an abstract, hypothetical concept that we use to explain why people think and behave as they do.” Additionally, Pintrich and Schunk (2002, p.5) defined motivation as “the process whereby goal-directed activity is instigated and sustained.”
However, despite the process-oriented perspective taken by Pintrich and Schunk (2002), their definition is incomplete on account of the fact that they failed to take the post-task motivational processes into account, i.e., learners’ evaluation of task performance and attribution of success or failure of task to proper causes.
Consequently, Tseng (2009, p.11) argued that the definition of motivation should be operationalized as “the process whereby goal-directed behaviors are instigated, sustained and evaluated.” The motivation questionnaire adopted in the present study includes items addressing the five components of motivation: self-efficacy, extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, performance orientation, and mastery orientation.
As for the categorization of the motivation questionnaire items, each composite
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concerned different dimension of the participants’ motivation. Self-efficacy deals with learners’ judgment of their abilities and competence to execute a course of action when participating in a task (Bandura, 1986). People with higher self-efficacy are more likely to take part in a task while people with lower self-efficacy may avoid doing it. Therefore, self-efficacy is likely to influence choices of tasks, effort, aspiration, and persistence. Dörnyei (2001a, p. 23) concurred that self-efficacy should be regarded as a motivation antecedent since “self-efficacy beliefs are only indirectly related to actual competence and abilities because they are the product of a complex process of self-persuasion that is based on cognitive processing of diverse sources.”
Intrinsic motivation (IM) and extrinsic motivation (EM) are two of the three types of motivation proposed under the self-determination theory (Dörnyei, 2001a).
Intrinsic motivation refers to completing a task for the sake of fun and pleasure while extrinsic motivation means doing a task for external outcomes. People with intrinsic motivation might do tasks for the enjoyment that the tasks produce; people with extrinsic motivation tend to accomplish a task in order to obtain an award or avoid punishment.
Mastery orientation and performance orientation are specified in relation to the goal-orientation theory (Ames, 1992), which concerns not only the purpose for achievement, but also how the goals are attained. Mastery orientation refers to learners’ intention to facilitate their learning and to live up to their own learning standards without considering the engendered outcomes. Performance orientation refers to learner’s intention to demonstrate his/her competence or capability for the sake of others’ opinions. Learners with mastery orientation believe that they are likely to succeed if they make efforts and they will pursue the achievement of learning process and content (Dörnyei, 2001a). Learners with performance orientation believe that learning can display their abilities and obtain recognition from others and they
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will seek for the achievement of learning outcome and social comparison (Dörnyei, 2001a).
1.2.5 Self-regulation
The significance that self-regulation may attribute to learners is that self-regulation could help learners to develop responsibility for their learning outcomes (Zimmerman, 1990). Schmitt (2000) and Nation (2001) both asserted that learners’ responsibility for vocabulary learning played a critical role in their achievement of higher level of lexical knowledge. The definition of the concept of self-regulation varies according to different researchers. However, some similarities can be drawn and observed from these definitions. Schunk and Zimmerman (1994, p.
ix) defined self-regulation as “self-generated thoughts, feelings, and actions, which are systematically oriented toward attainment of their goals.” Wlodkowski (1999, p.329) considered self-regulation to be “a process by which learners control their behavior, feelings, and thoughts to attain academic goals.” Zimmerman (2000, p.14) offered the definition as “self-generated thoughts, feelings, and actions that are planned and cyclically adapted to the attainment of personal goals.” Pintrich and Schunk (2002, p.176) regarded self-regulation as “the process whereby students activate and sustain cognitions, behaviors, and affects that are systematically oriented toward attainment of their goals.” Summarizing the definitions given by many researchers, Tseng (2008, p.7) conceptualized self-regulation as “the self-directed processes by which systematic operations of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are attuned to take control over a chosen action.” As can be seen from the above definitions, self-regulation is essential to learners’ achievement and attainment of goals. Self-regulated learners can control their behavior or feelings autonomously in order to complete certain tasks.