Teaching at Writing through Context-based Explicit Grammar Instruction

Teaching at Writing through Context-based Explicit Grammar Instruction

  The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of context-based Explicit Grammar Instruction (EGI) on teaching of writing. Firstly, it is to identify the effectiveness of context-based EGI by comparing the results of the pretest and posttest. Secondly, it is to examine whether context-based EGI contributes to grammatical accuracy in students" essay writings. Thirdly, it is to draw teachers" attention to what grammatical error type students make through error analysis. Lastly, it is to verify students" attitudes toward grammar and writing through questionnaire analysis. A total of 140 gifted students participated in this study and the results showed 1) that context-based EG! proved more effective on the high-level group than the low-level group; 2) that the target grammar structures (tenses and conditionals, voices, and relative clauses and relative clause reduction) made more contributions to writing performance than other selected structures and that the sentences in essays of the high-level group were more complicate than those of the low-level group; 3) that the most frequent grammatical errors appeared in articles, gender and number agreement, and word choice; 4) that the majority of students perceived context-based EGI essential for good writing and favored the type of controlled essay writing. Through the results of this study, it is recommended that context-based EGI should be applied in designing more effective writing instruction suitable for the EFL situation.