THE IMPACT OF INPUT ENHANCEMENT TYPE ON IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS’ KNOWLEDGE OF ENGLISH TENSES ACROSS GENDER

The present study evaluated the potentially relative effectiveness of visual/textual input ? based treatment on the acquisition of English tenses by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. To this end, the Oxford Placement Test was given to 100 EFL students in order to homogenize the sample. Out of this 60 participants whose score fell one standard deviation above and below the mean were regarded as intermediate and, therefore, were chosen and randomly assigned to four equal groups according to their gender ,containing 15 students in each group. Then the pre-test which was based on the objective Tests in English as a Foreign Language Book was administered to all the four groups to assess their knowledge of English tenses. The result of the pre-test demonstrated that the four groups did not differ significantly with regard to their knowledge of target items (i.e., English tenses). Next the four groups separately attended 8 sessions of the intervention in which computerized programs was used to introduce English tenses to the two experimental groups and the traditional way of using chalk and board for the two control groups. In fact, the experimental groups were taught visually/textually enhanced input, but the students in control groups received no specific instruction and the students were simply exposed to the materials without any typographical enhancement. Later in this study, the four groups took a post-test that measured the learners’ acquisition of English tenses(as the same as the pre-test),which in turn, revealed the effectiveness of the teaching methods applied. Finally, T-Test and Pearson correlation were used to analyze the obtained data.