AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE
As we have seen, there is broad consensus that the acquisition of an L2 entails the development of implicit knowledge+ However, there is no consensus on how this is achieved; nor is there consensus on the role played by explicit knowledge+ The UG position, as articulated by Gregg ~1989!, is that acquisi- tion has nothing whatsoever to do with explicit knowledge+ Cognitive accounts of L2 acquisition, however, are much more mixed+ Traditionally, the relation-
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ship between the two types of knowledge has been discussed in terms of the interface between them, as shown in the following discussion of three dis- tinct cognitive perspectives+
According to the noninterface position, implicit and explicit L2 knowledge involve different acquisitional mechanisms ~Hulstijn, 2002; Krashen, 1981!, are stored in different parts of the brain ~Paradis, 1994!, and are accessed for performance by different processes, either automatic or controlled ~R+ Ellis, 1993!+ In its pure form, this position rejects both the possibility of explicit knowledge transforming directly into implicit knowledge and the possibility of implicit knowledge becoming explicit+ However, in a weaker form of the noninterface position, the possibility of implicit knowledge transforming into explicit is recognized through the process of conscious reflection on and analysis of output generated by means of implicit knowledge ~Bialystok, 1994!+
In contrast, the strong interface position claims that not only can explicit knowledge be derived from implicit knowledge but also that explicit knowl- edge can be converted into implicit knowledge through practice; that is, learn- ers can first learn a rule as a declarative fact and then, by dint of practice, can convert it into an implicit representation, although this need not entail the loss of the original explicit representation+ The interface position was first formally advanced by Sharwood Smith ~1981!IP address: 182.209.114.22, on 10 Sep 2018 at 01:31:01, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms.