Declarative and Procedural Knowledge
Learning Objectives
- I can understand and explain the difference between declarative and procedural knowledge
- I can give examples of declarative and procedural knowledge in my language(s)
Do you have your driver’s license? Maybe you ride your bike to work or to school. Or maybe you just walk. Whichever way, you most likely don’t actively think about the daily motions of how you are getting to wherever you need to go. You probably go through the same ritual of starting your car every day such that it becomes automated. It becomes what we call ‘procedural knowledge’, or “knowing how to do something” (Carpenter et al, 2000, p.7). If you bike, you most likely don’t think about the mechanics of biking or even the speed you’re going for the most part. It’s all part of the vast amount of procedural knowledge that your brain has that you might not even be conscious of. Procedural knowledge makes up one aspect of the total knowledge in our brain, but what about the other aspects?
Now that we know the basics of what defines declarative and procedural knowledge, I want to exercise these ideas, and hopefully prove to you that you know more than you think thanks to your procedural knowledge. I will show you four different examples of different adjective orders in English, and it’s your job to click on the grammatically correct one. If English is not your first language, your answers might also rely on your declarative knowledge database if you learned it in school. The exercises will become progressively more difficult but don’t worry. None of this is graded.
How did that exercise feel? Did you surprise yourself? Hopefully, you found out that you know more than you think about the order of adjectives in English. If you’re a native speaker, it’s likely that you use combinations of these on a daily basis without thinking about it.
Let’s move on to declarative knowledge. In this activity, you will have to select the correct homophone – words that are spelled differently but sound the same. In context, you probably don’t think about the writing of these words, but this exercise will put that knowledge to the test. It will start easy and get progressively harder. Just like the previous activity, it’s your job to choose the correct word or part of a word to fill in the blank. You may think these answers are obvious, but they only seem that way to you as a proficient English speaker. Many languages would put these adjectives into different orders.
While the first quiz focused on procedural knowledge, declarative knowledge was essential for the second. There is no way of being able to correctly answer the questions without knowledge of the written English language and its rules which you had to learn at some point.
That said, reflect on your declarative and procedural knowledge in your second language, and if you don’t have a second language that you have been studying or know, then think about another skill, maybe art, music, or math. Be honest with yourself.
- How much of it is automatic to you? If it is more automatic, it is more likely procedural!
- Can you hold basic conversations about the weather without even thinking about it? If so, that knowledge is procedural!
- Do you have to translate the word for “rain” before you can complain to another person? Thinking of translations is an indication of declarative knowledge!
These are just examples of declarative and procedural knowledge, and whether your knowledge of anything is more declarative or procedural it’s ok. Building both declarative and procedural knowledge is an important part of language learning, and knowledge and familiarity can be slow to develop. This is normal as well, yet monitoring your progress can assist in self-reflecting on when something becomes automated in your brain.
When setting your goals, remember your current knowledge, whether declarative or procedural. Setting realistic expectations with our current knowledge in mind helps us to learn more efficiently. So, what are other ways that we can help our brains learn?