EXPLICIT GRAMMAR RULES AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING: A CASE STUDY OF INTERMEDIATE IRANIAN EFL LEARNER’S KNOWLEDGE OF PAST TENSES

The present article presents an empirical research study that examines EFL learners’ awareness of grammatical structures when they speakspontaneously in group work tasks. In this study, 5 intermediate EFL learners of English were audio-recorded while working on a small group work task. The past tense structures used correctly by the individual participants were assigned and the participants who produced them were later interviewed in a separate test session. The task in the test session required the participants to explain the rules underlying the tenses assigned for them. The results of the test revealed that in most cases, the participants had an explicit knowledge and high awareness of the rules underlying the correct tenses used. The net result of the study indicates that there were few grammatical structures that learners knew implicitly and didn’t have any awareness of their rules. For EFL teachers, the study offers that providing learners with explicit grammar rules can contribute to successful foreign language learning