On Implicit and Explicit Learning
Some insights from my time learning languages
I’ve been an off-and-on language learning for the last decade, and, after a brief hiatus over the last couple of years, have returned to study Spanish and Mandarin in earnest.
Returning to the language learning grind has me reflecting on different modes of learning, their interplay, and how people often get them wrong. To provide us a jumping off point, I’m going to define two broad modes of learning:
Explicit Learning, which we can consider any learning that requires teaching rules or procedures. This type of learning is often accompanied by a textual explanation of the procedure and some examples to practice applying that procedure. Most subjects in school are taught this way: e.g., learning a new approach in math or working through a grammar workbook in Spanish class.
Implicit Learning which we can consider any learning that occurs as a mostly unconscious process. A helpful rule of thumb is that any learned material that requires a response in seconds falls under the purview of implicit learning - at that time scale, there isn’t enough time to work through a procedure (and hence to use the tools of explicit learning).
Now, anyone who has learned a language in school (or read my not-so-subtle leading example in the Explicit Learning section) knows that explicit learning is the modus operandi of foreign language instruction in the United States. Virtually the whole process occurs in a grammar textbook where the student is shown some concept, such as the conjugation of verbs ending in -ar in the present tense in Spanish. The student then reads through the “logic” of how this grammar concept works and works through a set of examples in order to “apply” the procedure.
I hope the scare quotes I used above made it abundantly clear how ridiculous I think language learning logical or procedural is. In fact, there is no logic to language grammar since it did not grow out of a logical process! Language grew organically alongside humans, and so it has all the same messy, non-logical characteristics that we see in all things biological and anthropological. This is why every grammar “rule” that is taught has dozens, if not hundreds, of exceptions! We’re applying a method of learning suitable for math to a completely unrelated field in language learning that categorically does not follow a logical structure with teachable procedures!
(Trigger warning for anyone traumatized by this teaching method: I am about to show an example of one of these accursed grammar worksheets.)
Now you might be thinking: “Okay, so easy fix — we just move all of language learning and any other similar fields to implicit learning. Explicit learning remains reserved for the logical subjects of math and physics. QED.” In this paradigm, all of the non-rigorous subjects would eschew explicit learning, and all of the rigorous subjects would focus only on explicit learning.
However, despite this aligning more with the natural contours of each subject, we would be leaving potential learning speed on the table by sticking only to implicit or explicit learning. I will give two examples to illustrate the point:
Language Learning (Implicit Learning Paradigm) — Suppose you are learning a foreign language and, like the good language learning student we’ve outlined thus far, you’re doing it fully through immersion (that is, implicit learning). You avoid all grammar explanations and worksheets, and instead spend all of your time listening to podcasts, reading books, and watching YouTube videos in your target language. If you come across a particular grammar construction that you don’t understand, you just try your best to understand it in context and keep immersing. With this setup, it might take dozens of hours of immersion to understand the grammar concept, particularly for rare constructions or variants of the same construction that look unrelated on the surface. Meanwhile, reading about the grammar topic and doing some exercises might take under an hour and prime you for your immersion.
Mathematics (Explicit Learning Paradigm) — Now suppose that you’re a math student and, like the good math student we’ve outlined thus far, you’re doing it fully through working through derivations and proofs (that is, explicit learning). You avoid any form of memorization or intuition building, and instead spend all of your time focusing on logically deriving all of your course content. Now, as the course moves on, it will assume knowledge that you learned earlier in the semester. However, since you didn’t bother to do any memorizing or intuition-building, you don’t remember those earlier concepts with any sort of automaticity! You need to rederive all the knowledge from scratch, and, after the course material builds up beyond a certain point, the cognitive load of this derivation becomes too much, and you start to fall behind.
As the two above examples show, even in subjects that are skewed towards one of the learning paradigms, the other still has an important role to play.
In implicit-dominant subjects, we can use explicit learning to identify or study patterns that we would like to notice during the implicit skill development. This would be like a language learning studying a grammar concept (explicit learning) to improve their understanding during immersion (implicit learning), or a basketball player breaking down defensive coverages in film (explicit learning) so he can make better reads during scrimmages and games (implicit learning).
In explicit-domain subject, we can use implicit learning to memorize and internalize concepts and procedures without concerning ourselves with their logical derivation. This would be like a mathematics student memorizing common integrals (implicit learning) to make it easier to understand the logical derivations of concepts that use integration, such as probability distributions (explicit learning).
Thus, broken down this way, the problem of learning any subject can be reduced to a three-part problem:
Where can you use explicit learning techniques in this subject?
Where can you use implicit learning techniques in this subject?
What should the balance and interplay of these learning paradigms be in this subject?
If you nail these three questions for your particular subject, then you will have achieved optimal learning speed and efficiency.