Effects of traditional grammar teaching on standard six learners’ performance in

understanding and using simple present tense, simple past tense, pronouns, and articles

Thulasimani Munohsamy

Lecturer Centre for Communication

Teaching and Learning Institut Teknologi Brunei

Brunei Darussalam

Reference to this paper should be made as:

Thulasimani Munohsamy

Munohsamy, T. (2014). Effects of traditional grammar teaching on standard six learners’

performance in understanding and using simple present tense, simple past tense, pronouns, and

articles. Asian International Journal of Social Sciences, 14(3), 90 – 107.  Retrieved

from http://aijss.org/index.php/aijss20140206/

Abstract

This study sought to investigate whether there is any effect of the traditional grammar teaching

on Standard Six learners’ performance in understanding and using simple present tense, simple

past tense, pronouns and articles in writing. The sample for the study consisted of 40 Standard

Six students of SK Tansau, Putatan, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah who was divided equally into two

groups which were the treatment group and the control groups. Tests of understanding and of

using the simple present tense, simple past tense, pronouns and articles were used as the

instruments of the study. The data was collected through the administration of the pre-test and

post-test. To analyze the collected data, the SPSS (Statistical Packages for Social Sciences)

version 11.5 was used. T-test was used to see if there was a significant difference in the mean of

gain score. The Pearson Correlation was used on both tests between treatment group and control

group to establish the relationship between scores on understanding and scores on using the

grammatical features investigated. The study found that there was no significant difference in the

mean of gain score in simple present tense, simple past tense and pronouns of the understanding

test as well as writing test between the treatment and control groups. The results also indicated

that there was no correlation between scores on test of understanding and test of using simple

present tense, simple past tense, pronouns and articles on writing in the treatment group. There

have been research studies in the past that lend clear cut support to the teaching of grammar as a

mean of improving writing, however the results of this research clearly show that the

implementation of Traditional Grammar Teaching has no effects on the students’ writing.

Keywords: Traditional Grammar Teaching, Form Focused Instruction, Understanding Grammar, Using Grammar

Introduction

English as a second language is a compulsory subject taught at all levels in every Malaysian

school. The syllabus structured by the Ministry of Education is functional in its content and

communicative in its instructional approach, the philosophy being to train Malaysians from

young to develop the relevant English language skills deemed vital for personal and professional

development and advancement in a global economy according to StudyMalaysia.Com (1998-

2005).

There is no doubt that a person needs to know basic knowledge of grammar in order to write or

speak accurately and also master the language. Therefore, grammar is one of the basic skills that

a person needs to learn in order to have the understanding of the English language.

Grammar refers to the rules, which govern the way the words of a language can be arranged in

order to convey an idea or message. The knowledge of grammar plays an important role in

writing composition where accuracy in forming sentences is taken into consideration. Grammar

was considered the foundation of all knowledge in the past and it was believed to discipline the

mind and the soul at the same time. Today, English composition teachers are questioning

whether grammar instruction is helpful or not. A lot of studies have not found significant

difference in writing ability between students who have studied grammar and students who have

not. Much other research contradicts that result (Kim, 2003).

Besides that there were arguments as well, on which grammar approach would be the best to

teach the students in order for them to produce coherent writing. There were different opinions

by different researchers and there is no exact approach that would be classified as the best way to

teach grammar to the students. Therefore whichever approach is taken into consideration, it is

important to look at the goal of grammar. This research focuses on the effect of traditional

grammar teaching on writing composition among Standard Six students of SK Tansau, Kota

Kinabalu.

The main problem, however is that despite years of learning or exposure to English language in

schools, students still do not perform well in English language and they are still grappling with

the issue of English proficiency. This is validated in a survey done by the Malaysian government

which revealed that nearly 60 000 Malaysian graduates are unemployed, many of who cannot get

jobs because of their lack of experience, poor English and communication skills (Borneo

Bulletin, 2005). Students in Malaysia have difficulties in experiencing their ideas or opinions in

English. These difficulties are apparent when English language teachers check their students’

written work especially their composition that require students to apply their grammatical

knowledge consciously or subconsciously to write sentences that are error free. Most students in

general are unable to write grammatically well-formed and coherent sentences.

According to Ayoob (1999), traditional grammar teaching teaches the rules of grammar, how to

effectively employ these rules and where these rules come from, empowers the students to create

influential composition. This statement clearly indicates that traditional grammar teaching is

essential in forming meaningful sentences. In Malaysia, at the Primary level, students have to sit

for UPSR (Ujian Penilaian Sekolan Rendah) examinations in which students’ ability to write

good composition contributes to total score of the examination. Students’ unsatisfactory control

of English can be serious impediment to conveying ideas in writing. One cannot have good

writing without knowledge of the rules of grammar and grammar would not exist if we did not

communicate with written word (Ayoob, 1999).

Research Objectives

This study seeks to investigate whether:

1) Standard Six students presented with Traditional Grammar Teaching have better performance

in understanding the use of tenses (simple present tense and simple past tense) than those

presented with Form-Focused Instruction.

2) Standard Six students presented with Traditional Grammar Teaching have better performance

in understanding the use of pronouns than those presented with Form- Focused Instruction.

3) Standard Six students presented with Traditional Grammar Teaching have better performance

in understanding the use of articles than those presented with Form-Focused Instruction.

4) Standard Six students presented with Traditional Grammar Teaching have better performance

in using the four grammatical forms in writing composition than those presented with Form-

Focused Instruction.

5) There is a correlation between Standard Six students’ performance in understanding the four

grammatical forms and in using them in writing.

Literature Review

According to Julie Dunstan (2003), Grammar is the feature of language (sounds, word, formation

and arrangement of words) considered systematically as a whole, especially with reference to

their mutual contrast and relations. There are different types of grammar developed through the

ages by linguists with different perspectives. This way of teaching grammar items is seen as a

scaffolding process one grammatical item nurtures the development of another new grammar

items. In relation to composition writing, therefore, grammar plays a significant role, because

writing composition involves in producing simple to complex sentence according to the students’

level of education grammar is essential to be learned by students for not only to have a better

understanding of the target language but also to be able to produce coherent written output.

Traditional grammar attempts, usually within a single language, to analyze and elucidate the

constituents of any given well-formed sentence. The focus of attention is on surface structure,

not meaning. The main benefit of traditional grammar is that it gives learners a basic

understanding of the building blocks of language, which can help in improving their writing

skills. Clearly, grammar is taught with the purpose of teaching students the structure of sentences

in the language. Theoretically, that knowledge should help students to write better.

Meanwhile Ellis (2002) defines Form Focused Instruction (FFI) as “any planned or incidental

instructional activity that is intended to induce language learners to pay attention to linguistic

form”. It serves therefore, as cover term for a variety of other terms that figure in the current

literature – “analytic teaching” , “focus on form “, and focus on form”, corrective feedback/ error

correction and “negotiation of form”.

Thus FFI includes both traditional approaches to teaching forms based on structural syllabi and

more communicative approaches, where attention to form arises out of activities that are

primarily meaning-focused (Ellis, n.d.). Although the majority of FFI studies have focused on

the domain of grammar, the term form in form focused instruction actually refers to all formal

aspects of language; to grammar, but also to pronunciation, spelling, intonation, etc. it should

also be pointed out that incidental in this definition is not the opposite of planned. Incidental FFI

is equally planned, in that it is intentionally provided when communication problems arise. The

term FFI, then covers a broad range of activities all focusing the learners attention on formal

aspects of the second language (Sible, 2005).

Table 1 Studies on the Relationship between Grammar Understanding and Grammar Use

The second language acquisition contains many claims that research has found form-focused

instruction beneficial. There is abundant evidence that form –focused instruction helps learners

acquire metalinguistic knowledge. It comes from studies in which learners who have received

such instruction were tested on their ability perform linguistics tasks having little relation to

authentic use of the language. The test used in these studies included sentences manipulation,

word manipulation, sentence combining, fill in the blanks in isolation sentences, multiple choice

problems, statement of grammar rules, use of explicit rules to judge the grammaticality of

sentences and translation of isolated words, phrases or sentences. Using such tests, researchers

have repeatedly found significant beneficial effects of form focused instruction (Truscott, 1988).

Methods

This is a quantitative and an experimental study. Data for this research were collections of

Grammar exercises done by the students in two samples of their written work which was done as

pre-test, before the treatment was given to the students, and post-test, after completing the

treatment. After completing the pre-test, treatment on Traditional Grammar Teaching on simple

present tense, simple past tense, articles and pronouns were given to students for the treatment

group. At the same time, students from the control group were taught Form-Focused Instruction

with the same four grammatical forms.

However both groups used the same sample exercises, just the way the grammatical forms were

taught was different. After the treatment, both the groups were given post-test which is the same

test as the pre-test in order to see whether there were any better performances in the learners. The

sample population in this study consisted of 40 students of Standard Six from SK Tansau,

Putatan, Sabah.

The samples were groups of Standard Six medium ability students in their English proficiency

from two different classes namely one treatment group and one control group with each group

consisting of 20 students. SK Tansau, Putatan has a total of 3 Standard Six classes and a total of

115 Standard Six students all together. The sample was chosen randomly and divided equally

into two groups based on the number of students. Since the study requires only two groups of

students and in order to give the treatment to two different groups, only the first two classes of

the three Standard Six classes were chosen.

Since all the students in both the classes were from the same ability group, the students were not

chosen based on any criteria. The first 20 students listed in the name list of the registration book

were chosen from the first class for the treatment group. For the control group same procedure

was used, where the first 20 students listed in the name list of the registration book were chosen

from the second Standard Six class. Therefore only 40 students from two classes with 20

students from each class were randomly chosen for this study.

The average age of the students in Standard Six is 12 years old. Two types of tests were used as

the instruments in this study which is the Understanding Test and Writing Test. The first test was

to see the understanding of the learners’ involving simple present tense, simple past tense,

pronouns and articles. The second test involving writing a composition requiring learners’ to use

simple present tense, simple past tense, articles and pronouns. The description of these

instruments is mentioned in the following paragraphs. The Part A of the test (both the pre and

post-test) consisted of 3 sections.

Section 1 consisted of 10 fill in the blanks items and 15 multiple-choice items. The 10 fill in the

blank questions consisted of 5 simple present tense and 5 simple past tense questions.

Meanwhile, the 15 multiple choice questions consisted of 8 simple present tense question and 7

simple past tense questions.

In Section 2, there were 10 fill in the blanks questions and 15 multiple-choice questions

involving pronouns whereas in Section 3 there were 20 fill in the blanks questions and 10

multiple-choice questions involving articles. In order to answer the filling in the blanks

questions, students had to select the correct answer provided to them in the bracket and for the

multiple choice question, students had to choose the correct answer from the 4 choices given.

Each correct sentence was given 1 mark. The second type of instrument used for data collection

was based on the writing composition in Part B of the pre and posttest. The length of the

composition was not more than 100 words. The topic for this test was given. Learners’ were also

guided to use the target grammatical forms by providing them with clues to be included in their

writing. The marks that were given to the students in the section B were based on the four

grammatical forms. Since students wrote a very short composition, therefore 30 marks were

allocated for this part. The scoring of writing was based on the analytical method where separate

score for each item was given.

Therefore in the 30 marks a total of 8 marks were allocated for the correct usage of simple

present tense and simple past tense each and total of 7 marks were allocated for the pronouns and

articles each. Every correct sentence with the specified grammatical forms was given 1 mark in

order to get the total mark allocated. To get an overall description of the data obtained from the

pre and post-test and the mean of gain score for every instrument used, SPSS software was used

to compute the mean scores and standard deviation of the test instrument. The t-test was used to

analyze the difference in the mean gain score for all the instruments used in the pre and post-tests

between the treatment and control group. The significance 2 tailed was used to see the level of

significance of the test.

Results

Table 2 below shows the mean for the pre-test, post-test and the mean of gain score for both the

control and treatment group.

Table 2 The overall mean for the Treatment and Control group

The t-test was used to analyze the first hypotheses of this research that there is a significant

difference in the mean of gain score between the treatment group and the control group in

understanding the use of simple present tense and simple past tense. The mean of gain score for

both tenses is 2.55 of the treatment group and 3.7 of the control group. Therefore the mean

difference is –1.15. The t value is –1.521 with 38 degree of freedom, which makes the

significance 0.136.Based on this result, the significance level is higher than 0.05. Therefore there

is no significant difference in the mean of gain score for tenses between the treatment group and

control group. Meanwhile the mean of gain score for both pronouns is 1.5 of the treatment group

and 0.95 of the control group. Therefore the mean difference is 0.55. The t value is 0.695 with 38

degree of freedom, which makes the significance 0.491. This concludes that the significance

level is higher than 0.05. Therefore there is no significant difference in the mean of gain score

for pronouns between the treatment group and control group The mean of gain score for both

articles is 2.05 of the treatment group and –0.6 of the control group. Therefore the mean

difference is 2.65. The t value result is 3.897 with 38 degree of freedom, which makes the

significance 0.000. This concludes that the significance level is lower than 0.05. Therefore there

is a significant difference in the mean of gain score for articles between the treatment group and

control group.

The mean for gain score for writing test is –1.45 of the treatment group and 0.025 of the control

group. Therefore the mean difference is –1.475. The t value is –1.442 with 38 degree of freedom,

which makes the significance 0.158. This concludes that the significance level is higher than

0.05. Therefore there is no significant difference in the mean of gain score for writing between

the treatment group and control group.

Based on analysis for the treatment group, using the Pearson Correlation format, the correlation

between the gain score for UT of the test and WT shows 0.067 level correlations with the

significance (2 tailed) by 0.778. Since the correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2 tailed),

therefore based on the data given, there is no correlation between learners’ mean of gain score in

understanding the simple present tense and simple past tense, articles and pronouns exercises and

using them on writing in the treatment group.

Discussion and Conclusion

Based on the statistical analysis done, there was not much of an improvement in the students’

performance in terms of understanding the simple present tense, simple past tense, pronouns, and

articles as well as using them in writing from the mean gain score obtained for the treatment

group as well as for the control group. This could be due to less number of students were

analyzed. If the number of students were more, there is a probability of gaining a better means

score of the study.

However the control group performed better in writing than the treatment group. This shows that

the traditional grammar teaching does not have better performance on learners’ usage of writing

in the treatment group than the control group. In terms of the level of significance, there is no

significance difference in the mean of gain score in simple present tense and simple past tense

and pronouns between the treatment and control group.

However, there is a significance difference in the mean of gain score in articles between the

treatment and control group. There is no significance difference in the mean of gain score in

using grammatical forms in writing between the treatment and control group. There is no

correlation between learners’ mean gain score in understanding the simple present tense and

simple past tense, articles and pronouns exercises and using them on writing in the treatment

group. Therefore there is no significant difference in writing ability between students who have

studied traditional grammar and students who have not.

However for the control group, the findings contradicts the study where that there is correlations

between learners’ mean of gain score in understanding the simple present tense and simple past

tense, articles and pronouns exercises and using them on writing in the control group. This shows

that teaching grammar in Form-Focused Instruction helps to improve students writing ability.

Therefore further research in this area can be done in order to find out if this method if revised

would help in students’ progress in understanding the grammar as well as improve their writing

skills. The results of this research clearly show that the implementation of Traditional Grammar

Teaching has no effectiveness on the students’ writing. The students’ were not able to express

themselves in a more meaningful way as a result of the competencies they had developed

through the Traditional Grammar Teaching.

However this result cannot be used to generalize that there is no better performance between

learners who learned traditional grammar teaching and with those who did not study any

grammar. This is because the sample for this study was small and only concentrated in one

school. There was slight improvement in terms of the understanding of the grammatical form

analyzed.

Therefore further research could be done with higher population and using longer time to carry

out the treatment in order to get a clearer or better results on this matter. Another reason for

gaining this results could be as Barkhater (1997) mention in her studies that may be traditional

grammar teaching is not being blended into students’ writing because it requires a great deal of

cognitive control and analyzed knowledge to deploy and overemphasis on the grammar skill can

undermine the production of it into writing. Therefore it is clear that, it doesn’t mean that once

grammar is taught and the concepts will be learned and applied forever after by the students. On

the contrary, grammatical concepts must often be taught and retaught to individuals as well as to

group or classes and students may long afterwards continue to need guidance in actually

applying what they have, in some sense or to some degree already learned. There is no quick fix

(Weaver, 1996). Kolln (1981) pointed out that teaching grammar in context of writing might be

much more effective than teaching grammar as a separate subject (as evidence, she cites, for

instance, a study by Harris (1962), which is reported at length in Braddock, Lloyd-Jones and

Schoer (1963). On the other hand, it is by no means clear that “application” of selected aspects of

grammar cannot be done just as effectively and a lot more efficiently without detailed explicit

grammar study as illustrated by O’Hare’s (1973) experiments in sentence combining (Weaver,

1996).

It is apparent from the above discussion that, contrary to what is widely thought to be true, there

have been research studies in the past that lend clear cut support to the teaching of grammar as

means of improving writing. Further research is needed with the experimental groups must

include a larger number of students, the instruction must be tried with variety of age and ability

levels and an assessment must be made of the longitudinal benefits to writing from such

instruction. Due to the time constraint and small number of students used to analyze, the results

obtained from this study cannot be used to generalize that there is no better performance between

learners who learned traditional grammar teaching and with those who studied Form-Focused

Instruction.

Therefore this study concludes that the idea that traditional grammar teaching improves writing

skills is much better supported by available research than is commonly supposed. However there

is no denying the need for more research in this area with larger number of students, the

instruction must be tried with a variety of age and ability levels and an assessment must be made

of the longitudinal benefits to writing from such instruction.

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