The Department of Linguistics presents a
Masters Thesis Defense by
Maria Alexeeva
Tuesday May 12th, 2015
3:30 PM in LNCO 2110
Academic English learners’ perceptions of the value of discourse-level, form
focused activities in college-level grammar instruction
ABSTRACT
This M.A. thesis reports the findings of a research study on the effectiveness of two different approaches to
teaching English grammar. The study used a quasi-experimental design and was conducted online, the
participants in the study being University of Utah international students whose first language (L1) is not
English. The purpose of the study was to see whether a discourse approach to teaching grammar can be
effective for L2 academic writers and perceived as beneficial by L2 academic writers. To this end, the study
compared two groups of English language learners (ELLs). The participants of the experimental group studied
course materials that were based on connected discourse, while the participants of the control group studied the
materials based on sentences that were not connected to discourse. A pretest-posttest design was used to
measure whether the two instructional approaches had a positive effect on participants’ performance.
Perceptions of the participants in both groups were investigated through perception surveys and follow-up
questions.
The results of the pre- and posttests indicate that there was no significant difference either between the two
groups after treatment, or within the two groups before and after treatment. Perceptual data analysis indicated
that the online course materials were perceived as helpful by participants in both groups.
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