Enhancing the Quality of EAP Writing through Overt Teaching

Roselind Wee,Kamaruzaman Jusoff,Jacqueline Sim

doi:10.5539/elt.v2n3p58

Roselind Wee, Kamaruzaman Jusoff + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v2n3p58

Copy DOI

Abstract

This paper examines how overt teaching is instrumental in reducing subject-verb agreement (SVA) errors of Malaysian EAP learners which in turn improves the quality of their writing. The researchers used overt teaching of these grammatical items, that is, SVA and investigated how this method has significantly benefitted the learners who were second year university students from different cultural and language backgrounds. Data was collected using a pre-test and a post-test. Even though the learners had spent more than a decade learning the English language since their early education, the data collected in the pre-test showed that they made gross SVA errors in their writing. Treatment in the form of overt teaching of SVA was given to the learners, after which the post-test was administered. The comparison of data of the two tests revealed significant improvements in the learners’ usage of SVA which resulted in improved quality of their writing. The major findings on the learners’ grammatical problems especially in SVA and their response to overt teaching prove that overt teaching enhances the quality of EAP writing produced by students.

Highlights

The dominant language in Malaysia is Bahasa Malaysia which is the medium of instruction in schools but the English language plays an important role in the country
They had been exposed to a similar methodology of teaching English, similar materials used by the lecturers and the same number of contact hours. This was to ensure that both groups were as similar as possible in terms of exposure to the English Language prior to the study. These two groups of learners were taking for their first time a writing course in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) which equipped them with the necessary writing skills for completing their reports and dissertations but required them to have already attained an advanced proficiency level of the English language
Learners have to ensure that their writing is grammatically accurate. This is especially true in the case of these EAP subjects who must be equipped with the basics of writing error-free grammatically correct sentences which will not mar or distort the meaning of their writing

Summary

Introduction

The dominant language in Malaysia is Bahasa Malaysia which is the medium of instruction in schools but the English language plays an important role in the country. Despite spending between 11 to 13 years of learning English as a second language, the Malaysian learners are still not proficient in the English language. The majority of Malaysian learners have still not mastered the grammatical rules of the English Language. They have been exposed to a communicative syllabus which focuses more on communicative competence rather than grammatical competence. Grammatical competence is a major component of communicative competence and gives the form or the structures of the language. It is not surprising that even after many years of studying English with the Malaysian communicative syllabus, they still fail to acquire high levels of grammatical accuracy. Sharifah Zakiah et al.’s (2009) study proved that the level of grammatical accuracy manifested in oral performances of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) graduates seems to be quite low

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion