Nasser Rashidi; Amir Yousef Farahmandi
Volume 3, Issue 3 , September 2016, , Pages 38-19
Abstract
The teaching of grammar plays a central role in every EFL classroom. This paper attempts to study the learning of grammar implicitly through exposing the language learners to as much authentic language as possible in interaction and practices of socialization in order to make grammar a byproduct of communication. ...
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The teaching of grammar plays a central role in every EFL classroom. This paper attempts to study the learning of grammar implicitly through exposing the language learners to as much authentic language as possible in interaction and practices of socialization in order to make grammar a byproduct of communication. It is believed that just by being exposed to lots of explicit grammar rules, the learners may not be able to learn and use correct grammar in everyday communication. In other words, language is not ready-made or ready-given. Language learners should benefit from opportunities for interaction with both the physical and social world, a combination of perception, interpretation, and action, i.e. an active relationship or engagement with the environment, the teacher and their peers through mediation. There are three core elements in the treatment: consciousness-raising (helping to raise students’ awareness about grammatical features), practice, and feedback. Thirty four EFL students participated in the study, seventeen of whom were randomly assigned to the control group and the other seventeen to the experimental group. Both groups also completed a questionnaire on a five-point scale of agreement. The participants of the experimental group who received treatment showed a better result on their posttest. Moreover, the main findings of the study showed a positive attitude of the learners towards implicit grammar instruction in general. This study is hoped to have tangible and practical implications for language teachers and language learners in Iran as well as in other countries.
Naser Rashidi; Mohamad Rahimi; Farzaneh Dehghan
Volume 3, Issue 2 , May 2016, , Pages 96-81
Abstract
Writing academic texts is a challenging endeavour for novice L2 writers, which causes them to rely heavily on the original texts. Some studies have differentiated intentional acts of fraud (like plagiarism) from patchwriting which they claim is unintentional source text reliance. However, others have ...
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Writing academic texts is a challenging endeavour for novice L2 writers, which causes them to rely heavily on the original texts. Some studies have differentiated intentional acts of fraud (like plagiarism) from patchwriting which they claim is unintentional source text reliance. However, others have a negative view toward it. The present study explores L2 graduate student writers and their professors' perspectives about these different writing practices and how they may work for or against developing professional writing expertise in a discipline. Survey questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. The results were analysed through calculating frequencies and percentages as well as inductive data analysis for transcribed interviews. The results showed that many graduate students used patchwriting in their attempts to write academic texts unintentionally and intuitively. The reasons identified for patchwriting were students' lack of confidence to write independently, inability to paraphrase or fear of not expressing the writer's message thoroughly, and, in some cases, the writers' intention to get around plagiarism detection softwares. However, both students and their instructors had negative views about patchwriting. They believed that writing strategies like patchwriting could not lead to professional writing practices in a discipline. More importantly, the students seemed to continue this practice all through their studies, which may be a sign of not receiving enough instruction and feedback in this regard. The role of explicit teaching is emphasized in making students familiar with the differences between paraphrasing and patchwriting.
