Explicit teaching of grammar and improvement in the grammar of student writing

Abstract

This article focuses on the question of whether formal teaching of grammatical constructions results in a change in ESL students. written use of these constructions. It also tests the assumption that given a large amount of comprehensible input in academic English, ESL students will automatically acquire this variety including its grammatical features. The writing produced by BSc first year L2 students enrolled in an ESL course forms the data of the study. Four sets of data were collected: exam essays written in June and November of 1999 when formal grammatical instruction was not part of the course, and exam essays written in June and November of 2000 when grammatical instruction was introduced into the course. Matched t-tests indicate that in neither 1999 nor 2000 did students. grammatical proficiency improve. The implication of this is that in the context of the study grammatical improvement was not observed either as a result of formal teaching or as a result of extensive communication in the language. The article speculates that this may be a result of students' targeting a non-standard variety of English: BSAE.