MEASURING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN A GRAMMAR-LED GENERAL ENGLISH COURSE AT A TERTIARY EDUCATION INSTITUTION

Abstract

With the need for instant communication and the boom of the digital era, quality content concerning grammatical output by language learners has become a hot issue among teachers, particularly university professors who aim at accuracy when dealing with their students’ production. The purpose of this study was to measure the effectiveness of a remedial grammar course created “ad hoc” for university leavers (n = 987) in Lima, Peru between March 2018 and September 2019. The dataset deployed in the study came from two instruments: Pre-Test and Post-Test, applied to participants at the start and end of every term. When processing the data, the difference of the paired samples did not follow a normal distribution, therefore, the t-student test could not be applied. Alternatively, the non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test had to be used, but only after verifying the assumption that the differences between post and pre-test samples followed a symmetric distribution. The test result yielded a very significant p-value, thus rejecting the null hypothesis that there were no differences regarding median grades between the pre- and post-tests. Furthermore, the effect size of nearly 70% confirmed the effectiveness of the grammar course and the appropriacy of the application of teaching and assessment methods.