Short-term And Long-term Effects Of Differentiated Grammar Instruction: A Quasi-experimental Study

Abstract

The present study raises two research questions: (1) Does the use of differentiated instruction have a differential effect on the learning of parallel structures in the short-term, in comparison with explicit or implicit instruction? (2) Will the differences, if any, last in the long term? Thirty (30) first-year university English language learners were divided into three groups: an explicitgroup (N=10), an implicit group (N=10), and a differentiated group (N=10). Grammaticality Judgment Tests were used to measure accuracy. The ANOVA test results in SPSS show that differentiated instruction had a lasting differential effect. Recommendations for research and pedagogy are discussed.