Using Group Reading Instruction As An Alternative To Explicit Grammar Instruction To Teach English Grammar

Throughout the history of English Language Teaching, teaching grammar has been one of the most important concepts. Different approaches, methods and techniques have been put forward regarding different ways of teaching grammar. Discovery learning and integrating grammar teaching with reading are among these ways through which English grammar can be taught. This study was conducted to test the effectiveness of a group reading instruction technique as an alternative to the traditional application of explicit teaching at a private university in Turkey. The study was carried out as an experimental research study by covering 64 Turkish EFL students in 2 different classes. The students were first-year university students who took a general English course (A1-Elementary level) as part of their curriculum. In the study, one of these classes (33) took part as the control group while the other class (31) took part as the experiment group. The control group was taught present simple tense by using traditional explicit teaching instruction (20 minutes) while the experiment group was taught the same topic by using a group reading activity which involved discovery learning, peer-interaction and teacher guidance (20 minutes). The effectiveness of these different teaching techniques was analyzed by applying a pre-test (20 questions including fill in the blanks, multiple choice, sentence formation questions and a cloze test) to determine the students' background knowledge regarding the topic and a post-test (20 questions including fill in the blanks, multiple choice, sentence formation questions and a cloze test) to determine the improvement in their knowledge regarding the topic before and after the application of each instructional technique. Though there was no significant difference between the mean scores of the two groups on the pre-test, the results indicated that the experiment group produced a significantly better learning outcome than the control group from the pre-test to the post-test.