THE LEARNERS’ GRAMMAR AND THEIR SPOKEN ENGLISH COMPETENCIES : A PILOT STUDY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.58963/qausrj.v1i6.29Keywords:
GRAMMAR , students , SPOKEN , LEARNERS , skillsAbstract
The objective of thiscurrentstudy is toinvestigate the null hypothesis saying that the 4th level students of the English Departments, education faculty and arts college, Thamar University <Yemen>, have no meaningfully significant relationship in their grammar acquisition and their oral competencies. The total number of the sample of population was 105, 91 education faculty students and 14 arts college students. They were between24 and27 years old. The language which they speak is Arabic. The multiple-choice test is composed of the 27 grammatical items which were divided and categorized into 8 items, Wh-Word, Verb to Be, Verb to do, Perfect Tense, Modals, Future Tense, Clauses ( That-Clause, Complement Wh-Clauses ), Conditional Sentence. In addition to the performance of the multiple-choice test which is based on the grammatical and spoken tasks which were taught to the students at the first and second levels of the two academic years, 2002/2003 and 2003/2004, they were asked to describe the grammatical rule of each item of the test in order to see whether or not there was a correlation between the learners’ grammar acquisition and their oral skills. Additionally, it was expected that the students could have learnt the English grammar successfully and in the meantime it was expected that they would have answered most, if not all, the 27 grammatical items of the multiple-choice test which they performed in the 1st semester of the academic year, 2005/2006. The findings of the grammatical rules description and the multiple-choice test accept and support the null hypothesis of the research whereas the t-test value (p. <0.05) and F value (p. <0.05) reject it and indicate that at the two English departments of the two faculties, the female students have achieved better results than the male students and the arts college students in fact proved that they are much more aware of the grammar usage in different social tasks and/or different social situations than the education faculty students.
Metrics
Downloads
References
- Al-Fotih, Taha Ahmed.2003. Acquisition of the English Articles by Arabic-Speaking Students: A Study of the second and third level students. Indian Linguistics: Journal of the Linguistics Society of India. V.64 (4): 157-174.
- Al-Fotih, Taha Ahmed. 2005. Finding the Semantics of the English Present Tenses Ambiguous. Thamar University Journal (1): 262-284.
- Al-Fotih, T. A. 2007. A Syntactic Study of Errors in The Written English, Thamar University Press, Thamar, Yemen.
- Al-Fotih, Taha Ahmed. 2008. The Impact of Translation in Developing English Language Learning. Thamar University Journal (8): 322-338.
- Al-Fotih, Taha Ahmed. 2010. The Semantics of the Central Modal Verbs: A Study of the 4th Level Students. Indian Linguistics: Journal of the Linguistics Society of India. V.70 No. 1-4: 7-24.
- Bachman, L. F&Palmer, A. S.1982.The construct validation of some components of communicative proficiency. TESOL Quarterly, 16, 449-465.
- Bolinger, D. 1977. Meaning and form. London: Longman.
- Brown, H. D. 1987. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
- Bygate, M.1999a.” Task as context for the framing and reframing and unframing of language”. System 27: 33-48.
- Bygate, M. 2001.’Effects of task repetition on the structure and control of oral language’ in M. Bygate, P. Skehan and M. Swain (eds): Researching Pedagogic Tasks, London: Longman. Pp 23-48.
- Canale, M. & Swain, M.1980. Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1, 1-48.
- Candlin, C. N. & Edelho , C. 1982. Challenges teacher guide. London: Longman.
- Carter, R. 2004. Orders of Reality: CANCODE, Communication and Culture. IATEFL DEBATE, ELT Journal, 2004.
- Chomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the theory of Syntax. Cambrige, MA: MIT Press.
- Close, R. A. 1982. English as a foreign language. London: George Allen and Unwin.
- Cummins, J. 1979. Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research, 49, 222-251.
- Dekeyser, R. M. 1998. ‘Beyond focus on form: Cognitive perspectives on learning and practising second language grammar’ in C. Doughty and J.Williams (eds.).
- Givon, T. 1984. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction(Vol. 1). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Halliday, M. A. K. 1970. Clause types and structural functions. In J. Lyons(Ed.),New horizons in linguistics (pp. 140-165). Harmondsworth, England: PenguinBooks.
- Halliday, M. A. K. 1973. Explorations in the functions of language. London: Edward Arnold.
- Halliday, M. A. K. 1978. Language as social semantic. London: Edward Arnold.
- Halliday, M. A. K. 1985. An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.
- Harmer, J. 1985. Meridian. London: Longman.
- Hutchinson, T. 1985. Project English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Jones, L. 1981. Functions of English. Cambridge: CUP.
- Leech, G. N. 1983. Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.
- LittleWood, W. 1981. Communicative Language Teaching. New York: CUP.
- Long, M. H. 1988.’Instructed interlanguage development’ in L. Beebe (ed.)
- Issues in Second Language Acquisition: Multiple Perspectives. New York: Newbury House.
- Long, M. H. 1991. ‘Focus on form: A design feature in language teaching methodology’ in K. de Bot, R.Ginsberg, andC. Kramsch(eds.).
- Moor, T. & Carling, C.1982. Understanding language: Towards a post- Chomskian linguistics. London: Macmillan Press.
- Nickel, G. & Wagner, k. Heinz. 1968. Contrastive Linguistics and Language Teaching. IRAL, VOL. VI/3, pp.233-255.
- Nunan, D. 1989. Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. New York: CUP.
- Nunan, D. 1987. Communicative Language Teaching: Making it work. ELT Journal, 14 (2), 136-145.
- Palmer, A. 1979. Compartmentalized and integrated control: An assessment of some evidence for two kinds of competence and implications for the classroom. Language Learning,29, 169-180.
- Politzer, R. L. & McGroarty, M. 1983. A Discrete point test of communicative competence. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 21,180-90.
- Robinson, P. 2001b. ‘Task complexity, cognitive resources, and syllabus design: A triadic framework for examining task influences on SLA’ in P. Robinson (ed.): Cognitive and Second Language Instruction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PP, 287-318.
- Rutherford, W. & Sharwood Smith, M. 1985. Consciousness-raising and universal grammar. Applied Linguistics, 6, 275-282.
- Savignon, S. 1972. Communicative competence: An experiment in foreign language teaching. Philadelphia: Center for Curriculum Development.
- Schulz, R. 1977. Discrete-point versus simulated communication testing in foreign languages . Modern Language Journal, 61, 91-101.
- Sheen, R. 2002. ‘Focus on form’ and focus on forms.’ ELT Journal 56/3: 303-305.
- Shepherd, J., Rossner, R., & Taylor, J.1984. Ways to grammar. London: Macmillan.
- Skehan, P. & P. Foster. 1997. ‘Task type and task processing conditions as influences on foreign language performance’. Language Testing Research 1/3:185-211.
- Smith, N., & Wilson, D. 1979. Modern linguistics- The results of Chomsky ‘ s revolution. Brighton, England: Harvester Press.
- Swain, M. 2001. Integrating language and content teaching through collaborative tasks. Canadian Modern Language Review 58/1: 44-63.
- Swan, M. & Walter, C. 1984. The Cambridge English course. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Taguchi, n. 2007. Task difficultyinoralspeechactproduction. applied linguistics, 28/i:113-135. Oxford university press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2011 Queen Arwa University Journal
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.