The Effect of Teaching Grammar Explicitly on College Students’ Grammar Competencies and Performance in EFL Classroom
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Date
2018-04
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Publisher
The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
Abstract
Teaching English language to EFL learners has always been a topic of interest for researchers to study and investigate. Determining the more convenient approach to teach different language skills in which guarantees the benefit of EFL learners, continues to be controversial. As grammar is considered to be one of the main elements of mastering the language, a lot of researchers studied a variety of grammar teaching approaches such as explicit and implicit approaches. Although explicit teaching is considered to be a traditional approach, yet a lot of teachers and educators still use it in their classrooms specially to teach grammar. This is due to teachers’ beliefs that grammar rules should be clearly explained in order to attract students’ attention to the details which will is assumed to result in enhancing students’ accuracy in using the grammar. Thus, this study intends to investigate the impact of explicit teaching of grammar on EFL learners’ competencies in writing and performances in grammar tests. The research was conducted in one of UAE colleges. Two teachers and a total of 20 students in level 3 from Foundations program participated in this research.
The methodology used in conducting this research was qualitative ethnographic method. The first instrument used in collecting data was classroom observations. The second instrument was an analysis of a variety of artefacts which were instruction worksheets, consolidation worksheets, students’ production in class, students’ writing test, and grammar tests results. The analysis was done in order to answer the research questions. Classroom observations and artefacts analysis enabled me to study the topic from different angles. Additionally, they provided me with access to valuable supporting evidence to support my arguments.
The main result of the research show that explicit teaching of grammar has different impacts on EFL learners’ competencies and performance. The variety comes from the different factors that contributes in the success or failure of the explicit teaching such as the methods and strategies used to implement explicit teaching, as well as the materials used to consolidate and evaluate students’ understanding. The analysis of data has shown an improvement in students’ competencies and performances when they were involved in the class, and they were provided with suitable consolidation worksheets. This research had some limitations which were considered as challenges to the researcher such as shortage of time, limited access to resources and teaching load.
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Keywords
teaching grammar, college students’, United Arab Emirates (UAE), EFL classroom, EFL learners, language skills, grammar competencies