Effects of Adaptive Prompted Self-explanation on Robust Learning of Second Language Grammar

Prompted self-explanation is a successful intervention for many domains. However, in our previous work within the domain of second language grammar learning, we found no advantage for self-explanation over practice alone. Here, we continue testing the generality of self-explanation through the development of an adaptive self-explanation tutor and report on results of a classroom evaluation (N=92) in which we compare the adaptive tutor to a practice-only tutor. We investigate both procedural and declarative knowledge acquisition as well as long-term retention. Results show that while self-explanation takes more time than practice alone, it leads to greater learning of declarative knowledge. However, there are no differences between conditions on immediate or long-term retention measures of procedural knowledge.