Shoudong Feng made a study of the error-based grammar instruction on fifth-graders' writing. Both the short and long-term gains proved to be significant in all three major categories (mechanical,sentence structure and usage). This study explored whether the results Feng presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of MSERA,U.S would be replicable in rural settings at different grade levels. Participants were 35 fourth-grade students in a rural elementary school. Students were asked to write an essay on the topic given by the researcher. Samples from the pretest were collected and analyzed for grammar errors. Then the researcher designed lessons based on the results and taught the lessons by using errors from the sample. Students wrote on a similar topic in the posttest. The researcher analyzed the grammar errors and compared the results. The results showed the number of errors reduced significantly,esp. the errors of spelling,sentence fragment,S-V agreement and homophone confusion. The probability that the difference was due to chance was less than 5%. The findings supported the hypothesis that the error-based grammar instruction has a positive effect on the accuracy of fourth-graders' writing.
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