The Effectiveness of task-based teaching on students` learning of "English relative clouses"

IV ABSTRACT This study has aimed to compare two types of teaching: task-based teaching, the purpose of which is to make learners involve in communicative real world tasks so that they can learn the target structures in a meaningful context, and presentation-practice- production, the purpose of which is to teach target grammatical structure or help them realize the functions in the target language. It was the aim of the researcher to find which model, presentation-practice-production or task-based teaching, is more effective in promoting students' learning of the target structures, "relative clauses" in English, which is chosen as target items. Forty-six intermediate learners of English as a Foreign Language in School of Foreign Languages at Anadolu University took part in the study. Both experimental and control groups were taught for six hours on the target structures. Task-based teaching was used in the experimental group in the teaching of relative clauses and traditional presentation-practice-production paradigm was used in the control group to teach the same structures. Each group was given a pre-test before the treatment to measure the students' knowledge of target structures before the treatment. After the treatment, a post-test was given to measure the learning in the short-term and to be able to talk about any significant difference in the degree of effectiveness between the two types of instruction. The same test was given to both of the groups two months after the treatment to be able to talk about learning in the long-term and to be able to talk about significant difference in the degree of effectiveness between both types of instruction comparing with one another. The statistical results of the study suggested that task-based teaching was more effective in the learning of the "relative clauses" in the short-term, whereas both types of instruction were effective in the long-term. The long-term learning differed from the short-term. The results of the study suggested that both types of instruction, task-basedand presentation-practice-production, were effective in the long-term; however, task- based teaching was found to be more effective in comprehension-based questions.