The acquisition of aorist passive voice in Turkish EFL context : a comparison between processing instruction and meaningful output-based instruction

Abstract

This study investigates the relative effects of processing instruction (PI) and meaningful output-based instruction (MOBI) in the learning of aorist passive voice in English by Turkish primary school EFL learners and attempts to see whether possible positive effects are retained well over time by PI and MOBI groups. For this study, two classes of 50 7th and 8th grade Turkish students at Atatürk Primary School in Çifteler town in Eskişehir, Turkey were randomly assigned into two instructional groups. Two different instructional packets and a post test and a delayed test were administered. The tests consisted of recognition and production tasks. The procedure regarding the treatment and posttest spanned two 40-minute class periods. Five weeks later the posttest was given as delayed test. Raw scores from the posttest and delayed test were submitted to a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results of the analysis of the recognition data showed that both PI and MOBI groups had some kind of knowledge gin as a result of the treatments. Both groups had positive effects on how learners recognized passive form; but PI group outperformed MOBI group with a significant difference. The effects of both PI and MOBI were not retained over time. The results of the analysis of the production data indicated that both PI and MOBI groups had some kind of knowledge gain due to the treatments. Both groups had positive effects on how learners produced passive forms and there was not a significant difference between PI and MOBI groups. In addition, the effects of both PI and MOBI were not durable over time. However, the drop in the MOBI group’s scores was greater than that of PI group’s scores. In addition, an error analysis was conducted to see whether the students’ mistakes in the production tests were due to errors of passive form or other linguistic features. The results indicated that totally 7,16 % of the errors were due to the problem with irregular verbs whereas 19,8 % of the errors were due to the singular – plural confusion of the verb to be.