The Relative Contributions of Explicit and Implicit Instruction in the Learning of EFL Apologies

This study aims to compare the influence of explicit versus implicit teaching on the learning of apology realization strategies in a foreign language context. To this end, 86 Arab elementary learners of English were divided into three groups: (1) a group that was introduced to the target realization strategies explicitly, (2) a group that was introduced to the target strategies implicitly, and (3) a comparison group that did not receive any instruction on the target strategies. Using a pre-/posttest design, the three groups completed a discourse completion task as a pretest, immediate posttest and delayed test. The apology-specific strategies the students produced in these tests were compared using mixed ANOVA and Bonferroni pairwise comparisons. The results revealed a positive influence for both the explicit and implicit teaching approaches with relatively more gains for explicit teaching. The effectiveness of the two approaches varied based on a number of factors including the time of test (i.e., immediate or delayed posttest), the learners’ prior knowledge, and the cultural acceptability of the apology-specific strategy. The results are interpreted in light of the existing literature and relevant theoretical hypotheses.