ABSTRACT
The primary mechanism of explicit learning is in the initial registration of pattern recognisers for linguistic constructions, since conscious awareness is relevant in the initial consolidation of a unitary representation. In conscious awareness, information from a range of correlated variables is simultaneously available. R. S. Tomlin and V. Villa state that in cognitive science research, attention is differentiated from consciousness and awareness in both theoretical and empirical terms. Explicit instruction draws on the learner’s metalinguistic awareness or by asking learners to attend to the targeted linguistic feature with the aim of arriving at metalinguistic generalisations of their own. Metalinguistic information can have a priming function for conscious interpretations, since it can provide the context that serves as a powerful constraint on the processing of subsequent forms. Linguistic knowledge is conceptualised in terms of constructions that is conventionalised form-meaning mappings varying along the parameters of specificity and complexity.
