Discourse-based grammar instruction in ESL academic writing: a mixed methods study

Abstract

The present study examined the relative effects of discourse-based and sentence-level grammar instruction on the learning of English present perfect in academic writing, using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design. Participants were 37 multilingual graduate students enrolled in different sections of an ESL-writing course at a U.S. university. Prior to two 35-minute instruction sessions, the participants completed a pretest composed of acceptability-judgment, forced-choice, and fill-in-the-blank tasks. The same tasks, with different but comparable items, were administered immediately after and four weeks after the completion of the instructions. Retrospective verbalizations were elicited after completion of the delayed post-test to elicit the learners’ awareness of the target form and other related tenses in academic writing. While results of the acceptability-judgment and forced-choice tasks show non-significant differences among the treatment and control groups on the pre-post-delayed post-tests, the discourse-based, fill-in-the-blank task results reveal that the discourse-based instruction group outperformed the other groups immediately after instruction. Results from the retrospective interviews corroborate these findings. Implications for discourse-based grammar instruction are discussed.

ABSTRACT IN CHINESE

本研究采用序贯解释型混合型设计, 考察了基于语篇和句子层面的语法教学对学术写作中英语现在完成时学习的相对影响。

参与者是37名多语言研究生, 她们参加了美国一所大学的ESL写作课程的不同部分。在两节35分钟的教学课程之前, 参与者完成了由可接受度判断、强迫选择和完形填空所组成的预测是。在四周后课程完成的地时间, 参与者再次进行了内容不同但具备可比性的统一测试。在完成延迟后测试后, 进行了回溯语汇分析以了解学习者在学术写作中对目标形式和其他相关失态的认识。虽然可接受性判断和强迫选择的结果显示实验组和对照组在前-后-延迟后测试中没有显著差异, 但基于话语的完形填空的结果显示, 基于语篇的教学组在教学课程后的表现优于其他组。回顾性访谈的结果证实了这些发现。最后, 本文讨论了基于语篇的语法教学的影响。

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

This study compared the effects of discourse-based and sentence-level grammar practice on raising ESL writers’ awareness of using the present perfect in academic writing. Thirty-seven multilingual graduate students were recruited from academic writing courses at a U.S. university and divided into three groups receiving discourse-based, or sentence-level grammar practice, or no grammar practice. Before, immediately after, and four weeks after the practice, they all completed three grammar tasks checking their discourse-level and sentence-level verb tense usage. After the third test, some participants from the two grammar practice groups were interviewed to explain their awareness of the present perfect and other related verb tenses in academic writing. The results showed that although all groups performed similarly on sentence-level grammar tasks over time, only the discourse-based grammar group got better on a discourse-based grammar task immediately after practice. Interview results supported the positive effects of discourse-based grammar practice. The current findings highlight discourse-based grammar practice to help raise ESL students’ awareness of verb tense usage.

Keywords:

• discourse-based grammar
• academic writing
• acceptability-judgment
• present perfect
• retrospective verbalization
• mixed methods research

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Yiping Liu for her assistance with the abstract in Chinese.

Notes

1 The intrinsic semantic properties of verbs and predicates are referred to as lexical aspect. It has been classified in terms of durativity and telicity, which, in turn, allows a four-way classification of a situation: accomplishment, achievement, activity, and state (Vendler, 1967).