Implicit Learning

How did we learn our first language growing up? It certainly wasn’t with our parents sitting down with a dictionary and explaining words to us. It was through natural interaction. Or have you ever traveled abroad and heard a new language around you? Imagine someone traveling in Québec, for example. They might pick up a few words or phrases they didn’t know before, such as Bonjour (French for Hello) or Comment ça va? (French for How are you?). They might not know what “Comment ça va?” means the first time they hear it, but they certainly would after the 10th time. Even with nobody translating it for them, nobody speaking in English, and nobody trying to explain it, the meaning would sink in, and they would learn implicitly. Ellis (2015) defines implicit learning as, “acquisition of knowledge… by a process which takes place naturally, simply and without conscious operations” (p. 2).

Explicit Learning

By contrast, Ellis (2015) defines explicit learning as “a more conscious operation where the individual makes and tests hypotheses in a search for structure” (p. 2). In other words, in explicit learning, we are consciously thinking about the thing we are learning, with no ambiguity and little room for different interpretations on our own. This often occurs in classroom environments, when we are being taught something directly. For example, if you are in a Portuguese class and the teacher points to something red and says, “vermelho“, this is explicit instruction. But it can also be independent of classroom lessons, such as when you are making a vocabulary list with definitions or asking your friend ‘How do you say “thank you” in Portuguese?’.

Putting Them Together

Let’s see how these can work together when you’re learning something new in a language.

Let’s meet Faith. Faith is one of the authors of this book. She studies Japanese and is passionate about language learning. Faith will be our teacher today in a Japanese lesson on fruits. Try your best to pick up on patterns if you don’t speak Japanese already. Which words are repeated in each sentence? Which words are different in each sentence? To make it easier, we will highlight some key words and provide visuals. As you watch the video, you can take notes if you want. There will be a quiz afterwards to assess yourself.

How did that quiz go for you? Was it easier with the visuals provided? Maybe it was easier because it was all given to you explicitly. Did you happen to pick up on any other repeated words, though? Maybe I lied – there won’t be one quiz, but two!

As you can see, this second quiz dealt with vocabulary that Faith didn’t talk about explicitly. If you picked up on any of these words (and don’t speak Japanese already) these are words that you learned from Faith implicitly. Are you starting to understand? Learning occurs anytime we are exposed to something new, whether that be a language, science concept, math, etc. By being aware of different ways of learning, we realize how valuable all the input is that we take in. You might not know how to say “This is a strawberry” off the top of your head in Japanese now, but you are likely to more easily recognize that same sentence structure the next time you hear it. With repeated exposure to implicit content, learning takes place, and we can learn things that we are never explicitly taught. Once we start trusting this process, we can recognize that not all learning has to be explicit, effortful or difficult. We are learning more than we think!

References

Ellis, N. C. (2015). Implicit and explicit language learning: Their dynamic interface and complexity.  In P. Rebuschat (Ed.), Implicit and explicit learning of languages (pp. 3–24). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.48.01ell 

Media Attributions

All original videos on this page © Logan Fisher and Abhay Pawar are licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 (Attribution NonCommercial) license.