CHAPTER 7. Speaking skills 121 readily available for the L2 learner and the amount of attention needed for cognitive processes involved in speaking and listening on the part of the L2 learner is strongly reduced. is process of consolidation, schematization and automatization of FUMMs is likely to translate into sped up production and comprehension of oral language, which is henceforth perceived as more general pro ciency. is is also in line with the results from chapter 6 (chunks in writing) which indicated that in their writing the DUB learners used more chunks than SB learners. Vocabulary and Grammar, by contrast, can be characterized as two more speci c, knowledge-based dimensions of oral pro ciency, and an SB approach might provide L2 learners with such lexical and grammatical knowledge. e absence of temporal aspects in the descriptors of these two dimensions might lead to relatively smaller di erences. Our ndings thus provide empirical support for a strong version of CLT and are in line with several other longitudinal classroom studies. A er two years of language instruction with or without explicit attention to grammar, Piggott (2019) showed that the implicit group outperformed the explicit group, especially in terms of uency. Rousse-Malpat et al. (2021) found that the DUB group in their study outperformed the SB group on oral skills a er three years. e implications for L2 instructional e ectiveness research are that it is important to conduct longitudinal studies with free response data to gain insights into the e ectiveness of di erent teaching pedagogies as over time e ects may change. For example, Piggott et al. (2020), in her two-year study on L2 English, showed di erences in uency and accuracy in favor of the strong CLT group in the rst year, but these leveled o in the second year, perhaps because of the extramural English exposure in the Netherlands. In contrast, Rousse-Malpat and Verspoor (2012) in their study on L2 French showed that their SB-taught group was more accurate in terms of several morphological areas than the DUB group a er one year, but this di erence disappeared a er the second year, presumably because of the extra exposure a er two years in the program. Following Shintani (2013, 2015), it would also be interesting to see to what extent the actual classroom discourse contributes to the process of learning the L2. e implications for L2 pedagogy are that target language exposure and use is important for speaking skills to develop. Teachers should try to maximize target language exposure, especially when extramural exposure to the target language is limited. However, speaking and using a foreign language in a classroom is not easy, especially with absolute beginners. erefore, a DUB method such as AIM may be a good solution as it allows for carefully structured and repeated input, complemented with gestures, visuals and drills to make the FUMMs comprehensible (cf. RousseMalpat et al., 2022) and with time allow learners to distill the regular patterns in language implicitly (Shintani, 2015). For intermediate students, the input and exposure can become more complex and challenging, as evidenced by the need for an extended program used in the current study; but here too, extensive L2 exposure can be ensured
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