Interface Position

The interface position is a concept in second-language acquisition describing the range of possible theoretical relationships between implicit and explicit knowledge in the mind of a second-language learner. Implicit, or tacit, knowledge is language knowledge that learners possess intuitively but cannot readily put into words, while explicit knowledge is language knowledge that learners possess and can also verbalize; a native Spanish speaker, for instance, intuitively knows how to conjugate verbs without being able to explain the underlying rules, whereas a non-native learner of Spanish may be able to explain those rules without yet being able to apply them fluently in natural speech. The nature of the relationship between these two kinds of knowledge in second-language learners, including whether and how explicit knowledge can become implicit, has received considerable attention in second-language acquisition research.