Explicit Grammar Instruction for EFL Writing and Editing: An Exploratory Study at a Korean University

Grace H Wang,Seok-Dong Wang

doi:10.13189/lls.2014.020204

Abstract

One of the most difficult areas to address in required college English classes for students and teachers alike is composition accuracy at the sentential level, that is, sentence grammar. The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of explicit grammar instruction on Korean students' perceptions of their writing and editing skills at the sentential level in a freshman reading and writing course. The study participants comprised of 15 students enrolled in a required intermediate-level freshman English reading and writing course during the winter vacation semester at a top-ranking university in Seoul. The students completed a pre-intervention writing assignment prior to receiving sentence grammar instruction, and a similar but slightly different post-intervention assignment after receiving the instruction. The intervention was provided in the form of a set of workbooks which the students read and studied for homework over a period of a week. Aside from answering students' questions on the workbooks, no other sentence grammar instruction was provided. Upon submitting the post-intervention writing assignment, the students completed an online survey anonymously to reflect on their experience of the overall task. The results of the survey point to a positive impact of the intervention on the participants' perceptions of their writing and editing abilities. This study is significant for raising the issue that explicit grammar instruction delivered in the form of workbooks could have a beneficial role in foreign language writing pedagogy.

Highlights

One of the most difficult areas to address in required college English classes for students and teachers alike is composition accuracy at the sentential level, that is, sentence grammar
This study explored qualitatively the effect of explicit grammar instruction on Korean students' perceptions of their writing and editing skills at the sentential level, in a group of 15 freshman students enrolled in an intermediate-level reading and writing course at a university in Seoul
The sentence grammar instruction was provided in the form of a set of workbooks, which the students read and studied for homework over a period of one week

Summary

Introduction

One of the most difficult areas to address in required college English classes for students and teachers alike is composition accuracy at the sentential level, that is, sentence grammar. Part of the reason for this is that required college English classes in EFL contexts like South Korea are often at least two-skills focused, if not four, and they are commonly not devoted solely to the development of writing skills. Most university students in South Korea study laboriously as high school students to write university entrance examinations, and one of the subjects they are required to master for these examinations is English grammar. Many college English instructors, especially in Korea, as well as the students themselves, tend to feel that freshman students have had enough grammar instruction, thereby attending to other aspects of writing skills development, such as paragraph and essay organization. A recent content analysis of 238 empirical research studies involving Korean participants found that not one study involving Korean participants was published in the previous 20 years exploring this relationship between explicit grammar instruction and writing (Penn et al, 2013)

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