Do adult ESL learners’ and their teachers’ goals for improving grammar in writing correspond?

Abstract

Recent research has identified certain goals of adult second language (L2) learners and their teachers for writing instruction in English as a second language (ESL), yet questions remain as to whether students’ and teachers’ goals correspond in ways that achieve instructional objectives and facilitate L2 development. The present study compared L2 students’ goals for grammar improvement in academic writing with those of their teachers as students transitioned from an intensive ESL programme to university courses. Over a two-year period, we conducted 60 semi-structured interviews and stimulated recalls with 15 ESL university students along with 25 interview and stimulated recall sessions with 5 ESL and 9 university instructors. Results showed limited correspondence between learners’ and teachers’ intentions for grammar improvement. Learners expressed a strong preference for improving formal grammatical features, particularly verb tenses and clause structure, whereas instructors either reported that they had no goals for grammar improvement or sought to improve grammatical complexity and the stylistic appropriateness of text features. However, learners had little knowledge and awareness of these areas.