Spoken Grammar Features: Does the Way of Teaching Make a Difference?

Abstract

One of the relatively neglected aspects of today's English language pedagogy is the differences between written and spoken grammar. Many language learners often find that what they have learnt in their grammar classes is either irrelevant or (sometimes) even contrary to what they need to use the target language for oral communicative purposes. To fill part of the existing gap in the literature on this issue, This study was carried out. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of competitive and cooperative explicit and task-based instruction of spoken grammar features of heads, tails and ellipses on Iranian EFL learners’ awareness of these features. To this end, 90 female pre-intermediate EFL learners of Ghana Language Institute in Tehran were selected through convenience sampling. The participants were randomly assigned to four experimental groups, receiving explicit and task-based instructions in competitive and cooperative contexts. Prior to the treatment, a pretest was given to check the participants’ level of awareness of the spoken grammar features. After a 10-session instruction, a posttest was administered. The collected data were processed using the two-way ANCOVA procedure. The results indicated that competitive and cooperative contexts were equally effective on raising learners’ awareness of spoken grammar features. Moreover, there was a statistically significant interaction effect between type of instruction and the context of instruction. These findings may have important theoretical and pedagogical implications.

Keywords

• cooperative learning
• ellipses
• heads
• ُspoken grammar
• tails