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Chapter 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ——o— There are several major issues in second language acquisition (SLA), and two key issues are: what external conditions to which learners are exposed aid in L2 learning (Norris-Ortega 2000, Spada-Tomita 2010) and how these conditions interact with individual differences in learners (Dörnyei 2005). The former issue is centered on second language input conditions and the effect of these conditions on the second language learning process. One of these conditions is the explicit context (e.g., classroom), where learners are exposed to explicit grammatical rules or equivalents of vocabulary items of a given second language. On the other hand, in the implicit, extramural context, learners are exposed to L2 input, but there is a lack of exposure to explicit grammatical rules or vocabulary explanations. The second issue — the interaction of individual learner differences with the implicit and explicit contexts — focuses on individual learner differences in a classroom setting and in the extramural context. As for the first issue, previous research has found that explicit teaching contexts are more effective in the short run than implicit learning contexts (Norris—Ortega 2000, Spada—Tomita 2010). Nevertheless, Grey et al. (2015) point out that these findings are not surprising as explicit conditions normally yield more comprehensible L2 input than implicit conditions (Ellis et al. 2009, Norris—Ortega 2000, Sanz 2005), i.e., in a classroom, L2 learners may be exposed to comprehensible input, a kind of input which is relatively close to and is only somewhat above the current level of proficiency of the learner (Krashen 1982, 2009) more frequently than in a non-classroom setting. It is important to underline, however, that this may create the somewhat misguided belief that implicit exposure conditions are less important. On the contrary, implicit exposure conditions, such as EE activities where learners can encounter a particular L2, English in this case, are equally important because they provide meaningful contextualized opportunities for encountering the given L2. Consequently, for effective L2 learning, implicit and explicit exposure contexts should be combined (Nunan-Richards 2015, Richards 2015). It is equally important, therefore, to investigate how second language acquisition takes place in the extramural L2 learning context. As for the second issue, little research investigates learners’ individual learner differences in the implicit, extramural context (for an exception, see + ]7 +
