Vertical Grammatical Variability in Writing

Focus on form instruction is a kind of instruction that draws students, attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in meaning based instruction. There are different types of focus on form instruction. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of incidental focus on form on grammatical accuracy among Iranian L2 learners. Eighty learners from Sahand language Institute in Miandoab after taking grammatical judgment test which was administered to homogenize them, were placed in two control and experimental groups. Learners in experimental group received feedback through recasting during retelling the reading passage according to principles of Jigsaw task. But learners in control group did not receive any feedback. After treatment, which lasted for eight sessions, post-test was given to both control and experimental groups to observe the difference resulted from the treatment. To be sure about the significance of the difference between post-test means of both groups, a t-test was used. The results at the end supported the hypotheses of the study and positive effect of incidental focus on form on grammatical accuracy of L2 learners. After that, for the purpose of analyzing the effect of incidental focus on form on accuracy of pronouns, tenses, articles and propositions separately, other tests (pronoun, article, tense, proposition tests) was given to the learners in both control and experimental groups. The data collected was computed through t-test which revealed that the effect of incidental focus on form on grammatical accuracy of articles is greater than pronouns and tenses but incidental focus on form didn’t have any effect on accuracy of propositions. Pedagogical implications have been discussed. Keywords: Focus on form, Incidental focus on form, recast, task, Accuracy

Prompted by the interaction hypothesis and focus on form instruction, corrective feedback has received much attention in recent years within the interactionist framework. This study investigated the effects of three types of written corrective feedback (i.e., recast without saliency, recast with saliency, and metalinguistic feedback) on Iranian high school EFL learners’ grammatical accuracy of two structures in English: conditional sentences and relative clauses. To this end, four intact classes, comprising 104 low-intermediate Iranian high school EFL learners, were selected and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The three experimental groups received recasts without saliency, recast with saliency, and metalinguistic feedback in written picture description tasks/activities. Grammaticality judgment tests were used as the instruments to collect data on the participants’ grammatical accuracy of the two structures in a pretest-posttest control group design. ANCOVA and MANOVA showed that using written corrective feedback significantly improved the participants’ grammatical gains in the experimental groups. Moreover, metalinguistic and recast with saliency feedback (i.e., explicit feedback) was more effective than the recast without saliency feedback (i.e., implicit feedback). Furthermore, there was a significant differential effect of metalinguistic feedback for the type of grammatical structure. The study concludes with several pedagogical implications.

This study investigates the effectiveness of AI-based and teacher-based explicit correction on grammatical accuracy and learner autonomy among Arabian EFL learners at the university level. A total of 75 students were initially selected, but following a proficiency test, 54 homogenized EFL learners in terms of general English knowledge were divided into three groups: AI-based explicit correction (via ChatGPT), teacher-based explicit correction, and a control group with no feedback on grammar. The study employed a pretest-posttest design with grammar tests and an autonomy questionnaire administered before and after the intervention. Participants in both experimental groups were provided feedback on grammatical points like conditional type one, conditional type two, and active/passive voice through either AI tools or direct teacher feedback, while the control group received no feedback on the grammatical errors produced in writing texts. Results from the Kruskal-Wallis and ANOVA tests indicated that AI-based corrective feedback significantly improved both grammatical accuracy and learner autonomy compared to teacher-based feedback and the control group. These findings emphasize the potential of AI as an effective tool for enhancing language learning outcomes. The significance of the current study goes back to the role of AI and how it can play an influential role in both improving students'grammar and assisting them to become more independent and self-directed learners, which is an increasingly important skill in today's world. The implications for pedagogy and future research in technology-enhanced language learning are also discussed.

Persuasive/argumentative essays show how much a writer can implement his/her power to convince the reader in favor of his desired intention. However, many writers might encounter different types of challenges during the task of writing and wonder how to overcome them. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of concept mapping and brainstorming on the lexical and grammatical accuracy and writing anxiety of Iranian EFL learners’ argumentative essays. In doing so, ninety male and female students ranging from 17 to 35 in Iran National Language Institution (INLI) in Tehran were selected through cluster sampling based on convenience. An essay writing test and the second language writing anxiety inventory (SLWAI) were used both as pre- and post-test. The students were randomly assigned to three equal groups to experience different treatments in a 15-session semester. For data analysis, three separate one-way ANCOVA procedures were used. The results showed that both experimental groups did better than the control group. In lexical accuracy, the two experimental groups had almost the same mean scores, but in grammatical accuracy and writing anxiety, the concept mapping group obtained the highest mean followed by the brainstorming group. The findings of the study can have useful implications for teachers, students, material designers, and language assessors.

The research on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing has garnered considerable attention over the years, particularly concerning the impact of corrective feedback (CF) on students' errors. However, in the context of Kurdish EFL students, this area of research has received limited attention, despite its potential to enhance their grammatical accuracy in writing tasks. This paper addresses this gap by examining the impact of Explicit Written Corrective Feedback (EWCF) on Kurdish EFL undergraduate students' writing accuracy in terms of subject-verb agreement (SVA). For data collection, the study employed a mixed-method approach and recruited sixty junior EFL undergraduate students who were randomly assigned to two groups: the experimental group (n=30) received EWCF on their SVA errors for five weeks, while the control group (n=30) received only implicit feedback without correction on SVA errors. Data was collected through questionnaires and pre-and post-tests, and the results revealed that EWCF was preferred by students and was more effective in enhancing their writing accuracy in terms of SVA, as evidenced in the post-test. The study has several theoretical and pedagogical implications, including the need for instructors to provide EWCF to enhance students' grammatical accuracy in writing tasks. Further, the study contributes to the limited body of research on EFL writing in the context of Kurdish students, highlighting the need for further investigation in this area.

Background: Autistic children with low level performance have problems in social interaction, communication skills and sensory processing as well as motor and balance function. Musical activity is one of the most effective therapeutic strategies to manage some of these core defects. The present study examined the effect of musical movement activities on the balance function of 7 to 14 years autistic children with low performance. Methods: Twenty-two autistic students with low performance at age range of 7 to 14 years old participated in the study were assigned to experimental and control group randomly. The interventions were consisted of musical movement activities for experimental and without music for control group. Balance performance of subjects was assessed before treatment, and after 12 th and 24 th therapeutic sessions using balancing subtest of Bruininks-Oseretsky test of motor proficiency (BOTMP). The assessments were double blinded. Data were analyzed employing repeated measures of ANOVA. The SPSS software-version 17was used. Results: The results indicated that the effect of interventions on two groups was significantly different (F; 1.2= 52.8, P<0.001). The improvement in the balancing performance has been observed in both groups after 12th and 24th sessions although the difference in balance scores between groups was higher after 24th treatment session (P<0.001); that is in experimental group more improvement was obtained. Conclusion: The findings suggest that musical movement activities can accelerate the improvement in balance function of autistic children with low performance.

Writing is regarded as a hard-to-deal skill in English, and achieving grammatical accuracy in writing is considered challenging for most English learners. As technologies advance, Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) tools have increasingly been implemented in English language education to enhance learning outcomes. As an AWE assistant, Grammarly has been found beneficial in improving English learners' writing skills. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of using Grammarly in enhancing learners’ grammatical accuracy in writing. The study utilized a case study design with qualitative and quantitative data collected from thirty-two second-year college students. Learners’ writing assignments were analyzed using surface structure taxonomy followed by a survey questionnaire to get quantitative data for the research. Qualitative data was provided through a focus-group interview. The findings revealed a reduction in learners’ grammatical errors after Grammarly intervention and their positive attitude toward using Grammarly to improve their English writing. Afterward, there were several recommendations for teachers to foster their students’ English writing skills.

In an attempt to contribute to the ongoing debate about how output tasks affect noticing of linguistic forms, the present study set out to investigate the effect of pushed output tasks on grammatical accuracy in sentence writing of Iranian EFL learners. Fifty homogenous Iranian EFL learners were randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. Then, every group underwent ten different treatment sessions. The control group received writing instruction through conventional methods, while the experimental group received instruction through two pushed output tasks. In the case of the experimental group, in the first five treatment sessions, four grammatical structures were presented through picture cued tasks. The next five treatment sessions directed at other structures took place via reconstruction tasks. Two different versions of the writing section of the Preliminary English Test (PET) were used as pre/post-test. The results indicated that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group. Therefore, it might be argued that pushed output-based tasks had a positive effect on the Iranian EFL learner’s grammatical accuracy in sentence writing. These findings provide empirical support for the output hypothesis and have pedagogical implications for the choice of output-oriented grammar tasks.

The study reported in this paper aimed at investigating the efficacy of written corrective feedback (CF) in improving beginner EFL learners’ grammatical accuracy. It also compared the effects of focused and unfocused written CF on the learners’ grammatical accuracy. Seventy-nine beginner EFL students formed a control group (n= 29) and two experimental groups (focused= 25, unfocused= 25). The use of the third person singular ‘s’ morpheme for verbs was selected as the target structure to be treated through the provision of the written CF. The focused group received corrections concerning the use of the ‘s’ morpheme while the unfocused group received corrections for their all types of errors. The results indicated a significant improvement in accuracy for the two experimental groups from pretest to posttest. Also, the difference between the focused and unfocused groups in the posttest was not significant. These results suggested that providing written CF was effective for improving learners’ grammatical accuracy and that focused and unfocused written CF were not of differential effect in this regard.

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The study reported in this paper aimed at investigating the differential efficacy of scaffolded feedback and recasts as two types of corrective feedback (CF) in improving elementary EFL learners’ grammatical accuracy. Forty-five beginner EFL students formed a control group (n= 16) and two experimental groups (scaffolding= 16, recast= 13). The use of the third person singular ‘s’ morpheme for verbs was selected as the target structure to be treated through the provision of the corrective feedback. The scaffolded feedback was operationalized within a sociocultural framework as a collaborative process during which learners were provided with assistance adjusted to their individual needs. Recasts, on the other hand, were operationalized as reformulations of learners’ erroneous utterances without the error. The results indicated a significant improvement in accuracy for the two experimental groups from pretest to posttest. Also, the difference between the scaffolding and recast groups in the posttest was significant. Overall, these findings confirmed the beneficial effects of CF and in particular scaffolded feedback on learners’ grammatical accuracy.

Recent studies have shown the efficacy of written corrective feedback (WCF) in improving ESL/EFL learners’ grammatical accuracy. Using a quasi-experimental design, this study investigated the effectiveness of metalinguistic explanation (ME) corrective feedback as a form focused instruction on Iranian high school students’ use of the hypothetical conditional in their writing. Fifty high school students were given the Oxford placement test. Based on the results, 34 of them were chosen to be homogenous in terms of language proficiency. Then the students were randomly assigned into two groups, an experimental and a control group. The experimental group received the treatment (ME) after each guided writing practice while the control group did not. The results of independent samples t-test showed that the students in the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in the accurate use of the targeted feature. The results have some implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, and learners.

In everyday classrooms, teachers and their students must interact with each other on many levels. High communication abilities are required in order to teach and motivate these students effectively. Therefore, feedback is an important part of the teaching and learning. There are different kinds of feedback. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of metalinguistic feedback on grammatical accuracy among Iranian L2 learners. Sixty learners from Sahand language Institute in Miandoab after taking grammatical judgment test which was administered to homogenize them, were placed in two control and experimental groups. The experimental group, received metalinguistic feedback as the treatment. The researcher corrected the learners errors related to past tense and pronoun after they finished the retelling according to principles of Jigsaw task. But learners in control group did not receive any feedback. After treatment, which lasted for six sessions, post-test was given to both control and experimental groups to observe the difference resulted from the treatment. To be sure about the significance of the difference between post-test means of both groups, a t-test was used. The results at the end showed that learners in experimental group outperformed control group. After that, other tests (pronoun and tense tests) were given to the learners in both control and experimental groups. The data collected was computed through t-test which revealed that the effect of metalinguistic feedback on accuracy of tense is greater than pronoun. The findings of this study can be helpful for language teachers and teacher trainers.

Promoting communicative interactions, while simultaneously drawing students’ attention to language form, is considered as a potentially significant area of research in second language acquisition. This study focuses on the effect of transcribing task, as an autonomous noticing activity, on intermediate and advanced EFL learners' grammatical accuracy. The study was conducted in two advanced and two intermediate adult EFL classrooms, with one class in each level of proficiency serving as the control group and the other as the experimental group. Every session, over a period of 20 weeks, a classroom oral discussion task was assigned to both intermediate and advanced learners. For this purpose, learners were divided into groups of three or four in each class. Students were asked to record their groups' conversations each session. Students in the control groups gave their recorded conversations to the teacher without any post-task activity. Unlike the control groups, the students in the experimental groups were engaged in the post-task activity. Working individually, learners in the experimental groups first transcribed the recorded classroom speaking task and autonomously tried to find and correct their own and their peers' grammatical errors. Subsequently, working collaboratively, learners were engaged in further discussion and reformulation of these inaccurate utterances. The results obtained from one-way ANOVA indicated that transcription of oral output with a follow up self and peer correction significantly enhanced the accuracy of EFL learners’ oral production.

Languaging has been investigated and proved to mediate language learning and particularly has had beneficial effect on improving grammatical accuracy. This study aims to investigate whether written languaging, upon receiving reformulation after writing a composition and comparing the two versions, has any beneficial effect on intermediate EFL learners' writing accuracy in their immediate revisions. To this aim, 66 Iranian EFL learners were randomly assigned into three groups: two experimental groups (reformulation plus languaging as the experimental and reformulation as the contrast group) and one control group. The results support previous research findings on the positive effects of languaging indicating a significant decline in the number of errors both across the two writings within each group and also across the control group and experimental groups as well as between the contrast group and the experimental group. The role of reformulation alone and reformulation plus written languaging in mediating the improvement of grammatical accuracy in the writings of the learners along with theoretical and pedagogical implications will be discussed.