Abstract
ThisstudyexaminestheeffectivenessoftheprovisionofspecificinputontheuseofverbconjugationandtensestopreparatorystudentsatImamAbdulrahmanBinFaisalUniversity,Dammam,SaudiArabia.Thisisawell-documentedgrammaticalissuefornativeArabicspeakers, and was undertaken due to this factor, as well as the students under instruction having made numerous errors in their initial written work. Consequently, it was focussed on in the classroom, with the students’ post-input formal writing compared with the production of students fromanotherclass,atthesamelevel,who,incontrast,hadnotreceivedspecificinputonthisgrammatical feature. The results conclude that such overt input has no discernible effect, due to the errors produced by both groups being extremely similar with reference to both quantity andcause,withverbconjugationandmissingverbsfeaturingprominentlyforbothgroups,particularly the inability to use third person ‘s’. As a result, despite language acquisition being a gradual process, I will desist from focusing on this grammatical feature due to the lack of effect of the input, but, will continue to germane errors when providing feedback on student writing in order to provide a less explicit and time consuming focus on this issue, while attempting to improve grammatical accuracy.
Highlights
Grammar is at the heart of language learning, and has been “for centuries” (Folse, 2009, p. 1)
Despite language acquisition being a gradual process, I will desist from focusing on this grammatical feature due to the lack of effect of the input, but, will continue to germane errors when providing feedback on student writing in order to provide a less explicit and time consuming focus on this issue, while attempting to improve grammatical accuracy
Though Storch and Tapper (2009) comment on the unfeasibility of focussing on all the language issues students have, I agree, in theory, with the philosophy of Chodorow, Gamon, and Tetreault (2010), which states that exposing learners to problematic features is the best way to develop their language skills, and that producing structures post-input can lead to an improvement in grammatical accuracy (Master, 1997, Nassaji & Fotos, 2004 and Morgan, 2014)
Summary
Grammar is at the heart of language learning, and has been “for centuries” (Folse, 2009, p. 1). Tense places an action or event in a specific moment, and the verb form has a major role in the indication of time (Cowan, 2008), while aspect expresses a language user’s perspective with regard to the temporal course of an event, indicating how the speaker views the act (Kelin, 1994), with the two features complementing each other. I adore food in every way: looking at it, smelling it, tasting it, reading about it and talking about it. As long as it tastes good I’ll tuck into anything from tinned baked beans to saffron-scented sea urchins. I love discovering new tastes and ideas; it fills me with joy and excitement. I love travelling, so I’ve combined the two and become a sort of ‘food tourist’
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