A study of the effects of the exposure to spanish written grammatical features of the simple presents in the english lesson on 7th grade Students of master college and Liceo Nacional de Maipu

Abstract

This thesis work was conducted with the aim of demonstrating that the use of a comparative grammar of L1 is effective and beneficial when teaching a foreign language. The investigation was carried out in two different state schools from Santiago, Chile („Liceo Nacional de Maipú‟ and „Master College‟). In both cases, the work was carried out with a group of 15 students of each school. All students were enrolled in Seventh Grade. The research was conducted within 6 lessons, in the first one a Pre-test was applied in order to find out students‟ previous knowledge in relation to the Simple Present Tense. Afterwards, the results were analysed, and from the second lesson until the fifth one; the two groups of students were taught using different teaching methods. Finally in the sixth lesson a Post-test was applied in order to compare it with the pre-test and evidence students‟ improvement. The results showed that the students who were exposed to their mothertongue when being taught the Simple Present Tense structures in classes got better results than those who were taught mainly in the target language. An implication of this could be that the use of L1 in explaining the Simple Present Tense can be beneficial for the language learning process of students from Seventh Grade in Santiago, Chile.