Abstract:
The present study aims at investigating the differential effects of two types of instruction (explicit versus implicit) on the learning of English articles by Iranian EFL learners. To achieve this aim, 90 intermediate undergraduate students at Islamic Azad University, Shahreza Branch, whose major was English Translation were selected for the experiment. Then, they were divided into three groups namely, explicit group (EG), implicit group (IG), and control group (CG). The EG received instruction on English articles through two popular grammar books-- namely ‘Essential Grammar in Use’ by Murphy (1998) and ‘Oxford Practice Grammar’ by Eastwood (1999). The second group received instruction on English articles by employing the technique of textual input enhancement. The third group received similar instruction like IG except that English articles were not enhanced for this group. After analyzing the data on pre- and posttests, the results showed that the three groups of EG, IG, and CG improved significantly from pretest to posttests. Moreover, on the posttest, the EG learners significantly outweighed the IG learners, who were in turn found to be significantly better than their counterparts in the CG. The results of this study have several important implications for the classroom practice concerning the controversial issue of teaching English articles.
Machine summary:
com Abstract The present study aims at investigating the differential effects of two types of instruction (explicit versus implicit) on the learning of English articles by Iranian EFL learners.
The present study, for the sake of simplicity, has selected Master’s classification and investigates which type of teaching method (explicit or implicit) on English articles is more beneficial for Iranian EFL learners.
With regards to the controversial issues concerning explicit versus implicit instruction and difficulties in acquiring English articles by second and foreign language learners, the present study is an attempt to investigate which type of teaching method is more effective for Iranian learners of English.
Is there a significant difference between the effects of explicit (metalinguistic explanation) vs implicit instruction (textual enhancement) on improving Iranian EFL learners’ acquisition of English definite and indefinite articles?
Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the differential effects of explicit versus implicit instruction on English articles for Iranian Intermediate EFL learners.
To answer the second research question, namely “Does implicit instruction have a significant effect on improving Iranian EFL learners’ acquisition of English definite and indefinite articles?”.
To answer the third research question, namely “Is there a significant difference between the effects of explicit (metalinguistic explanation) vs implicit instruction (textual enhancement) on improving Iranian EFL learners’ acquisition of English definite and indefinite articles?” The results obtained from this study through the technique of one-way ANOVA revealed that the differences among the three groups of EG, IG, and CG.