Abstract:
Until recently, it was normal to design the teaching of spoken English based on the written
standards of the language. After the advent of spoken corpora and advancements in sound
recording technologies, however, the results of large body of research works began to indicate that
spoken language, especially, conversation, has its own grammatical features – spoken grammar,
that makes it different from writing. This, in turn, forced the spoken language researchers to
question the appropriateness of the standard English model for the teaching of speaking skills
based on the argument that people in real-life oral interaction mostly, if not wholly, do not speak
the way they write. However, this is not to relegate the written grammar model and throw it to the
dusty corner of the room, rather, it is to mean that the grammatical structures of both writing and
speaking should be introduced in synergy whenever necessary. To this end, the present study
examines the effects of corpus-informed spoken grammar instruction on EFL learners’ oral
language production. Moreover, the study also intends to investigate the perceptions of the students
and the experimenter teacher towards the instruction. To achieve this, a single group interrupted
time series quasi-experimental research design was employed. Purposively selected intact group of
Wolkite University undergraduate EFL students and their teacher were taken as participants of the
study. The students were exposed to the corpus-informed spoken grammar instruction which lasted
for six weeks based on the ‘Three I’s Approach’. Alongside the intervention, six different tests
were administered to the students on a weekly basis with the intention of measuring the effects of
the instruction on their oral language proficiency. What is more, at the end of the instruction, the
students were also asked to fill in an exit questionnaire which was intended to investigate their
perceptions towards the instruction. Likewise, teacher-logs were used to measure the perceptions of
the experimenter teacher. The results of students’ tests and questionnaire were analyzed by using
one-way repeated measures ANOVA, one-sample t-test, and descriptive statistics. Whereas, the
results of the teacher-logs were analyzed through thematic coding technique. Accordingly, the
findings revealed that the students demonstrated significant improvements throughout the tests
indicating that, given enough time and practice, the corpus-informed spoken English grammar
instruction can enhance EFL learners’ oral language production. Moreover, the findings also
indicated that most of the students and the experimenter teacher had positive perceptions towards
the instruction.
Key Words: Spoken Grammar, Corpus-informed materials, Oral Language Production
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Chapter One: Introduction