SELS Dialogues Journal Volume 3 Issue 1

Research Initiatives
Exploring Explicitly Teaching Grammar Structures
by Yousef Fooladi
As a core area in second language acquisition, the
question of should the explicit or implicit instruction
of the complexities of grammar be the norm for
language teaching practice and pedagogy has always
been debatable among experts. The purpose of this
research was to explore the influence of teaching the
compound and complex structures explicitly in video
input material on ESL learners’ intuition of compound
and complex structures. Out of the research problem,
two questions were created, one about the effect of
explicit teaching of compound and complex structures
extracted from video input material on second language
( L2) learners’ knowledge of these forms, and a second
question about whether such instruction can influence
L2 learners’ use of these forms in writing. And to this
end, 20 participants with intermediate level of English
language proficiency from the researcher’s students at
Centennial College in Ontario, Canada were selected
in two groups, control and experimental groups, each
group consisting of 10 participants. After the treatment
period, the resulting numerical data from these groups
on the two research questions were compared to show
the means of the two sets of scores before and after
treatment in both tests (i.e., the pre-test and post-test
of compound and complex structures as well as the
writing test). T-test statistical procedure was applied
for doing the comparison. Following a rigorous research
procedure supported by statistical analysis, the two
null hypotheses of the study were rejected (in the first
research hypothesis P=.001 and in the second research
hypothesis P=.015). The research design for this study
was quantitative pretest-post test quasi-experimental
design. The results of the current study would lead to
practical implications for the ESL teachers, ESL learners
as well as the ESL material developers.
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