Effects of a Remedial Program on Beginner-Level, Low-Achieving EFL Learners Author:Tsui-Chun Hu，Ying-Ju Hsu
Research Article
Bridging the achievement gap among learners and maximizing the effectiveness of instruction have attracted significant research attention; however, very few studies have focused on developing a systematic remedial program, particularly for beginner-level EFL learners. Hence, this study first proposed a remedial program to develop the language component skills of low-achieving beginner-level EFL learners. Subsequently, the program’s effect on low-achieving learners’ vocabulary and grammar was measured. Finally, the study provided an overview of the remedial program’s characteristics , highlighting its instructional methods and materials, teaching procedures, activity designs, and approaches for enhancing learner engagement. This study recruited 11 teachers and 567 grade 7 students from six junior high schools in Taiwan. Two subtests, DCEC-Vocabulary Size and DCEC-Grammar of the Diagnosis and Certification of English Competency (DCEC) system, were conducted on all 567 seventh-graders. In total, 117 grade 7 students who failed to reach the grade 4 level were assigned into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group (N = 56) received experimental instruction, whereas the control group (N = 61) received traditional instruction. The study results indicated that the seventh-graders who received experimental remedial instruction demonstrated better English component skills, including better vocabulary and familiarity with grammatical sentence patterns , compared with students who received traditional instruction for remediation. The current study provided a model remedial program by delineating the implementation of remedial instruction for low-achieving beginner-level EFL learners. The proposed remedial program can serve as a model to facilitate the work of practitioners, researchers, curriculum designers, and policymakers.
Effects of a Remedial Program on Beginner-Level, Low-Achieving EFL Learners
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