The Role of Input Enhancement in Grammar Acquisition among Graduate Students: A Study from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17408888

Abstract

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) has a perpetual and focal concern on grammar acquisition, especially when English is used as a foreign language like in Pakistan. Input improvement is one teaching method that has received growing interest and the goal of this technique is to render linguistic features more evident to students without being represented in a conspicuous grammatical manner. The study examines how input enhancement can support grammar acquisition by alumnus students in the public sector universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) in Pakistan. A quasi-experimental project has been used, which included 60 graduate students who were split into an experimental group (received input-enhanced texts) and a control group (received regular texts). Pre-tests and post-tests were controlled so as to test explicit linguistic knowledge and specifically passive voice and the relative clauses. The findings indicated that the experimental group achieved much higher gains than the control group and this implies that input enhancement certainly interferes with grammar learning at the graduate level. The article makes a contribution to the study of SLA in Pakistani context by bringing out the pedagogical importance of input enhancement among higher education learners.

Key Words: Second Language Acquisition, grammar acquisition, teaching method, grammar acquisition,  Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK)