The comparative effects of processing instruction and dictogloss on the acquisition of the English passive by speakers of Turkish

Abstract

The current study presents the results of an experiment investigating the effects of processing instruction (PI) and dictogloss (DG) on the acquisition of the English passive voice. Sixty speakers of Turkish studying English at university level were assigned to three groups: one receiving PI, the other receiving DG and the third serving as a control group. Assessment measurements consisted of an interpretation task, a sentence-level production task and a reconstruction task in a pretest-posttest design. The results indicated that PI offered an advantage over DG in terms of developing correct interpretation of passive structures in English. In addition, PI was found to be as good as DG in terms of developing sentence-level production and simple text reconstruction.