First Advisor

Marjorie Terdal

Term of Graduation

Winter 1988

Date of Publication

2-22-1988

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (M.A.) in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Department

English

Language

English

Subjects

English language -- Gerund -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Foreign speakers, English language -- Infinitive -- Study and teaching (Higher) -- Foreign speakers

DOI

10.15760/etd.5737

Physical Description

1 online resource (vi, 80 pages)

Abstract

Gerunds and infinitives persist in being a major problem for students of English as a Second Language. Therefore, Bolinger's (1968) principle appeared to be an attractive alternative to teaching gerunds and infinitives as opposed to the usual way of list memorizing.

A group of 101 ESL learners ranging in the mid to upper intermediate level was randomly distributed among two groups--experimental and control. They were given three tests prior to the experiment and three tests after treatment. Both groups were given the same contextualized materials. However, the experimental group was taught gerunds and infinitives using the Bolinger principle whereas the control group was taught gerunds and infinitives by list memorization.

Two hypotheses were posed:

1. Teaching ESL learners gerunds and infinitives using the Bolinger principle will result in significant improvement in discrete point tests.

2. Teaching ESL learners gerunds and infinitives using the Bolinger principle will result in significant improvement in the use of gerunds and infinitives in writing.

In order to measure improvement for the first hypothesis, two discrete point tests were administered to the subjects. Two t-tests were run to see if there was any difference between the experimental and control groups. The t-tests showed that the experimental group had improved significantly over the control group. A writing sample was used to measure the second hypothesis. Although this test was not able to be statistically analyzed, results showed that the experimental group again did better than the control group.

Rights

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Comments

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/21658

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