A study of the effects of processing instruction on the development of English wh-questions used by Turkish EFL learners

This dissertation has aimed at comparing the possible effects of processing instruction (PI) and traditional instruction (TI) on the development of English wh-questions by Turkish EFL learners, examining whether the possible improved performance would be long-lasting in the long-term memory. For this study, 56 Turkish students attending preparatory program at Foreign Languages Center (YADIM) at Çukurova University were randomly assigned as a) processing instruction group, and b) traditional instruction group. In this study, two different instructional packets, a pretest, and two posttests were administered. The tests were consisted of two parts: comprehension and written-production. In the comprehension part, there was a grammaticality judgement task (GJT). In the written-production part, on the other hand, we had a translation task (TT) and a picture-cued task (PCT). Two weeks before the instructional treatment, the pretest was administered. The instructional treatment and the posttest1 spanned a period of one week. Four weeks after the posttest1, the posttest2 was administered. The raw scores obtained from the pretest and posttests were examined through using two-way ANOVA and the results were presented in tables and figures.The findings obtained from the comprehension task, namely GJT, revealed that both the PI and TI groups resulted in some kind of knowledge gain due to the treatments. However, the results of the posttest2 presented that only the effects of PI were retained over time.The results of the analysis of the written-production data indicated that both the PI and TI groups resulted in some kind of knowledge gain and both the TI and PI had a positive effect on how learners produced the English wh-questions. However, in the posttest2, the TI group was unable to retain the proficiency gains across the postest1 and posttest2 while the PI group?s scores were durable.KEY WORDS: Processing instruction, traditional instruction, wh-questions