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- Title
Does direct grammar instruction improve students' performance on grammar-based tests of English as a foreign language?
- Authors
Hsiao-li Wu
- Abstract
This paper reports the results of an experiment designed to test the hypothesis that direct grammar instruction has a positive impact on the test performance of learners of English as a foreign language. At first sight, the results appear to indicate that direct grammar instruction had a negligible effect overall on test performance. However, a more detailed examination of the results suggests that there was a marked positive effect in the case of some students. Furthermore, the test itself proved useful as a diagnostic tool and as a measure of student progress. Perhaps most significant is the fact that a comparison of the results of a pilot study and the experimental study itself raises issues about the significance, or otherwise, of research on teaching and learning second and foreign languages that is based on single experiments. Teachers of languages (international, community and indigenous) need to be sure that experimentally-based research is both robust and of direct relevance to the particular contexts in which they work. This is of real importance for many Pacific and Pacific-rim countries where the teaching and learning of English can have implications for economic success, and the teaching and learning of indigenous languages can have implications for the very survival of these languages.
- Subjects
TAIWAN; COMPARATIVE grammar education; GRAMMAR; ENGLISH as a foreign language; FOREIGN language education
- Publication
He Puna Korero: Journal of Maori & Pacific Development, 2004, Vol 5, Issue 2, p48
- ISSN
1175-3005
- Publication type
Article