ENHANCING GRAMMAR THROUGH TEXTUAL FOCUS: COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES FOR SENIOR SECONDARY ESL LEARNERS

In Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) classrooms, the explicit teaching of grammar often takes a secondary role, potentially affecting learners’ acquisition of accurate and functional language use. While CLT emphasizes meaning-focused interaction, strategic incorporation of grammar is necessary for holistic language development. This study investigates whether grammar instruction can be effectively delivered using textual enhancement—a technique that visually highlights grammatical forms within texts—without compromising the communicative goals of CLT. An experimental design was employed involving fifty 12th-grade ESL learners divided into two equal groups. One group received grammar instruction integrated with textual enhancement, while the control group was taught the same grammatical content without the use of textual enhancement. Both groups underwent an achievement test following the instructional period. The findings revealed that the group exposed to textual enhancement demonstrated significantly higher gains in grammatical competence compared to the control group. These results suggest that textual enhancement can be an effective strategy to integrate form-focused instruction within a communicative framework, promoting better retention and understanding of grammatical structures in ESL learners. The study underscores the potential of combining communicative methodology with visually salient input to facilitate grammar learning in a way that supports both fluency and accuracy.