As part of my justification for using form-focused activites to help learners to acquire some and any-the subject of my PhD- I am critiquing Krashen's claim that there is a non-interface, or at least very little interrelationship between conscious learning of explicit grammatical knowledge and unconscious acquisition. As part of my critique, I would like to move outside language acquisition and see what researchers and theorists from other areas have to say about the relative importance of declarative and procedural knowledge and about the possibility that declarative knowledge can become procedural knowledge and therefore aid task performance. The problem with the discussion on this area inside language teaching and language acquisition is that it has become too ideologized. The opinions of linguists and teachers ( including my own of course) are coloured by their position on the need for a focus on form in the classroom and on the extent to which language skills can be considered to be separate from other cognitive skills.
Hello
When the tasks that are used by the teacher inside classroom come as natural, implicit, motivated, engaging, and in context as possible, this may affect the transforming of knowledge from learning to acquisition and from consious to unconsious as soon as possible. In fact, Krashen's hypotheses of learning and acquisition is right and dependable most of the time specifically in language learning context.
Liqaa
Dear Chris Turner:
Congratulations and thank you so much for asking this most important question in the context of Learning Strategies in Second Language Acquisition. In this way, learning a second language involves a gradual change from declarative to procedural knowledge. In order to achieve this, students may use some strategies, which begin as declarative knowledge that can become proceduralized with practice (procedural knowledge) and like complex cognitive skills, proceed through the cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of learning.
More to the point, declarative knowledge consists of knowledge about the facts and things we know, and it is stored in terms of units of meaning that can be represented by propositional networks requiring a schema, or a configuration of interrelated features that define a concept (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990). Thus, the principal value of schemata is that they facilitate making inferences about concepts. Consequently, in learning the new information is linked to prior knowledge stored in memory in the form of knowledge frameworks or schemata. Similarly, procedural knowledge consists of the things that we know how to do and includes mental activities such as language production skills (writing, speaking), language comprehension skills (reading, listening), and using strategies (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990). These strategies, as stated by the aforementioned authors, are divided into three categories:
1. Metacognitive strategies (they involve thinking about the learning process, planning for learning, monitoring the learning task, and evaluating how well one has learned.
2. Cognitive strategies (they involve interacting with the material to be learned, manipulating the material mentally, or applying a specific technique to a learning task).
3. Social and affective strategies (they involve interacting with another person to assist learning or using affective control to assist a learning task.
Accordingly, such strategies students use proceed, like complex cognitive skills, through the cognitive, associative, and autonomous stages of learning. During the cognitive stage, the second language learner engages in conscious mental activity in order to find meaning in the new language. In the associative stage, learners begin to develop sufficient familiarity with the knowledge acquired in the first stage so that it can be used procedurally. Moreover, in the autonomous stage, the learner is able to process new information at the same time that language is in use. In other words, parallel processing becomes possible (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990).
Bibliographical reference
O’Malley, J.M. & Chamot, A. (1990). Learning strategies in Second Language Acquisition, Cambridge University Press.
Best wishes,
Javier.
I think there lots of examples outside the realm of lingusitics. One that comes to mind is driving. You learn the rules of operating a vehicle (declarative knowledge) and then over multiple occasions you start to internalize these processes until it becomes fully proceduralized and you can perform all the steps (using clutch, easing off the gas, using your blinker, checking your mirrors) without even thinking about it (procedural knowledge). In relation to language learning, this is a very interesting (and devisive) topic in SLA and I wish you luck in your investigations!
I agree with Kris that driving is a good example of the declarative procedural distinction. In the very beginning when nothing about my driving was proceduralized, I felt I had to choose between staying on the road or keeping the speed I wanted. Thankfully parallel processing is now possible. Michael Ullman wrote a chapter called: The Declarative/Procedural Model: A Neurobiological Model of Language Learning, Knowledge, and Use. In addition to language, this chapter deals with memory systems used in non-linguistic cognitive tasks and also indirectly addresses why the DP model is a devisive SLA topic. It is dense reading, but very worth the effort.
declarative is a kind of theoretical knowledge of facts and rules like traffic rules while procedural is the automatized and practical form of that knowledge applicable in real lifecontext like driving cars automatically based on the declarative rules acquired before
In mathematics education, they contrast conceptual and procedural knowledge. I think you might find this useful.
I am currently analyzing my data pertaining to my Phd dissertation ; it is a qualitative study and includes English teachers' knowledge and beliefs. What I found in one of participants' interviews and of course her teaching periods is that certain compartments of teaching knowledge are easily elicited in the interviews, yet she was unable to apply the very teaching approach or preference she is professionally trained for and cognitively aware of. She is a novice teacher and quite evidently very young. So she possess the declarative knowledge yet her procedural knowledge is non-existent or inactive.
Yet, anther participant, a teacher with more than 20 years of experience, was a master of what she preached. She applied all the bits of pieces of her knowledge that orally shared with me in the interviews. So in her case, procedural and declarative knowledge existed and were direly linked.
What is interesting is that there are other factors that mediate the relationships between these two types of knowledge. Procedural and declarative knowledge are mutually effective but this relation depends on some other factors, that enrich and empower the link thereby the depth and wealth of both. I do apologize , but am not allowed share more, until I put an end to my Viva.
I hope you find it relevant to your question.
Cheers
Hesam
Chris Turner
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