developing efl students’ mastery of types of clauses through experiential learning : case study second year students at mohamed kheider university of biskra
Teaching quality significantly impacts students' intellectual competence, engagement and even identity. The long standing teacher-centered approach to teaching grammar, which prioritizes imparting knowledge to students and assessing their output, proved to be ineffective. This study examines the effect of an experiential learning-based model, a learner-centered approach, on EFL students' mastery of grammar. To this end, quasi-experimental research was conducted involving thirty-six second-year students from the University of Biskra divided into two groups. The experimental group, comprising 18 participants, received instruction based on the proposed model, while the remaining 18 students in the control group were taught using the Presentation Practice Production approach; they underwent an eight-week treatment. A baseline study was pervasive to gauge the informants' perceptions of grammar and their usage of the target structure in their writing. Two instruments, a questionnaire and a corpus analysis, were employed. The results revealed that the participants had no clear vision of the role they play when learning grammar and no preference toward any instructional method for teaching grammar. Additionally, their academic writing exhibited a deficiency in the use of dependent clauses. Evaluation of the proposed model's impact on the participants' grammar proficiency and learning strategies through pre-post tests and a strategy questionnaire showed a significant improvement in grammar proficiency and effective strategy utilization. Furthermore, a positive correlation was observed between the scores and the strategies employed by the experimental group after the treatment. Feedback from focus group discussions also supported the implementation of the proposed model for teaching grammar in an EFL context. The Study’s findings show the positive effect of the proposed model on grammar competence. (Author’s abstract)