Examining the Impact of Implementing Nicenet on Teaching Grammar Structures to Develop Writing skill among Iranian EFL Intermediate Learners

Abstract

It is possible that technology possesses a unique place in language teaching and learning. Research on CALL in the Iranian L2 context is rather scarce. This research intends to explore the impact of administering Nicenet as one of the virtual learning environments (VLE)'s on linguistic use and grammar instruction in writing. The design of the research was quasi-experimental method having a pre-test and a post-test. The subjects were chosen through the convenience sampling strategy and were assigned randomly into experimental and control groups (female = 21, male = 21) and control (female = 21, male = 21). The independent variable in this research was the teaching linguistic use (grammar) through Nicenet. The dependent variable was the participants’ linguistic use (grammar) as reflected by the writing test. The participants were chosen concerning their performance on the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) and were homogenized accordingly. The outcome of inferential statistical tests, ran through Mann-Whitney, depicted that there was a statistically significant variation between the accomplishments mean scores of the learners of the experimental group who learned the grammar through computer and the control group who studied the same syntactic item utilizing the traditional strategy. The results also showed that the accomplishment in the post-test for both the experimental and control groups is related to the treatment. The results depicted that computer as an instrument and Nicenet as an application could assist learners to escalate their grammar acquisition.