| University students in Malaysia need to demonstrate a high proficiency of the English language, particularly so in institutions of higher learning such as the International Islamic University where the medium of instruction is English in order to succeed academically. Here, the students are not only expected to comprehend academic texts in English but also to produce acceptable texts of their own. Unfortunately, they are often unable to do so because their prior training has not prepared them to organize textual information in a manner expected by a native speaker of the English language. Although they have acquired some skills in composition and drafting, they are still unable to write clearly and coherently, a problem related to the lack of control of the grammatical system. This difficulty appears to stem from two factors: first, the abstract treatment of grammar in the Malaysian academic world which makes it difficult for the the learners to internalize it; second, the emphasis on sentence level exercises in the structural syllabus precludes the raising of grammar consciousness of the students beyond this level. As a result of this situation, text features which help native speakers to produce coherent texts elude the ESL learners.; This study was designed to determine, through an experimental design, whether writing instruction highlighting the contrastive grammatical features of the L1 and L2 through a functional approach would have any effect on clarity and coherence of ESL learners' compositions.; The study was conducted at the International Islamic University with a sample of 61 second year Malay students pursuing the Advanced English Writing Course. They were divided into an experimental group (31) and a control group (30). The former received a 12-week treatment of half-hour lessons per week on contrastive grammatical features, and the latter were given the regular grammar exercises. All subjects were required to take a pretest, a posttest and a revised posttest. The essays were assessed by two raters using a holistic scoring method; then they were subjected to a series of grammatical analyses. The collected data was tested for statistical significance by means of ANOVA, the Tukey's tests and Pearson r correlation measure. The results were statistically significant for the treatment group exposed to contrastive grammar instruction as the subjects showed considerable improvement in their ability to convey clear messages, as well as in the overall quality of their compositions. The investigation, based on the findings, made the following recommendations: first, that English composition classes should include systematic instruction in contrastive grammar (English/Malay); second, that a functional approach demonstrating how language works will yield more positive results than one emphasizing formal grammatical explanations; and finally, that all grammar instruction should be contextualized. |
