The Impact of Grammatical Cohesion instructions through CLIL on the Written Composition at University Level.

Abstract

This research investigates the impact of content and language integrated
learning (CLIL) as a context in teaching how to write composition to
Iraqi fourth year students, at university level. The researcher
hypothesizes that: (a) fourth year students have weak background about
the grammatical cohesion devices. (b) Teaching grammatical cohesion
devices as CLIL can be regarded as an important tool in writing coherent
composition. (c) The CLIL students who received the grammatical
cohesion instructions are much better than the students who follow the
traditional way in writing compositions and learning English language.
The research questions are: (a) Does grammatical cohesion instructions
followed by CLIL approach have any impact on the development of the
students' writing composition and learning English language? (b) How
the students viewed the type of the instructions they received which
related to the grammatical cohesion devices? So, both quantitative and
qualitative methods were adopted by the researcher in collecting data.
Thirty students were randomly chosen, fifteen will be in CLIL group and
the other in non CLIL group. These students are from the fourth class in
Translation Department, College of Arts, University of Mosul. The
researcher used pre and posttest to ensure the students' ability in writing
compositions. In pre –test the researcher ensured the homogeneity of the
groups relating to their ability in writing compositions, whereas, the post
test shows the outperformance of the students. After that, the researcher
made interviews with the CLIL students to ask them certain questions
about their view regarding the grammar cohesion instructions that they
received in the lectures. The purposes of these interviews are to provide
some understandings about the efficiency of the grammar cohesion
instructions that the teacher follows.