Do The Grammar Knowledge and General English Proficiency Levels of High School Students Match? A Case Study
Behcet Celik
English Language Teaching Department, Tishk International University, Kurdistan Region, Iraq
Email: [email protected]
Published: February 22, 2023
Abstract
In the modern world, the factors affecting the learning of English by young generations have diversified considerably. Learning the grammatical structure, which is very effective among traditional foreign language learning methods, has fallen into the background in new generations. Therefore, there is a great inconsistency between the general English level of the students and their grammar knowledge. Students who can easily understand while watching any movie fall behind in grammar knowledge. In this study, students will be given a placement test to measure their grammatical knowledge. In addition, a story book at B2-C1 level will be asked to them to read and an exam will be given from this book. In order to further measure the English level of the young learners, there will be a quiz from a movie that is intended to measure their level. Thus, the difference will be revealed. Although grammar falls into the background in learning English, this appears to be a problem in international exams such as the SAT. This study will be done for 10th, 11th and 12th grades at Rise International School in Erbil. Finally, the grades of the students on the SAT English will be evaluated. According to SAT results of these students, 35 students got an average of 450 out of 600 from mathematics and 409 out of 600 from English test. Since SAT English test also requires grammar knowledge, the students got relatively low results from English test. The purpose of this study is to show that their sources of learning English gets rid of grammar, and they have difficulties in official exams because they need grammar knowledge there.
Keywords: Grammar, English Proficiency Level, Placement Tests, International Exams
DOI: 10.23918/vesal2023v10