The Development of L2 Intuitions

Intuitions, particularly judgments of grammaticality, have played an important role in theoretical linguistics, but the nature of grammaticality judgments by second language learners has not received adequate attention. The present study is an investigation of the function of grammaticality judgments in second language acquisition. Two groups of learners of different proficiency levels were asked to give grammaticality judgments of sentences they had written and of sentences other students had written. The results were analyzed in terms of the subjects' ability to make the appropriate grammaticality judgments and to correct those sentences they had judged to be ungrammatical. The results indicate that with increased proficiency in English, learners move from an overall ability to make general assessments of grammaticality to an ability to identify and/or correct particular details. The results of this study are also discussed in terms of Bialystok's (1979, 1981) notion of implicit/explicit knowledge and the general function of metalinguistics awareness in second language acquisition.