Effect of discourse-based approach on teaching present continuous tense to elementary L2 learners

Grammar has continuously held a central position in L2 teaching. All traditional precommunicative approaches to L2 teaching highly emphasize L2 form, whereas discourse-based approach to grammar strongly emphasizes context beyond the sentence level. This study was an attempt to examine the (possible) effect of discourse-based approach on teaching present continuous tense to elementary L2 learners. Therefore, we selected 60 elementary L2 learners from a language center in Mobarakeh, Iran, based on availability. The two course-books used were Family and Friends 2 and American English File Starter. The researchers administered a pretest for each group and then treated the experimental group, applying the discourse-based approach and used sentence-based approach for the control group. Finally, we administered a posttest for all the participants. An independent samples t test was run to compare the mean scores between the experimental and control groups on the posttest. The results indicated that there was a significant difference between the participants’ mean scores and the experimental groups did poorly on their posttest. The results imply that the control group participants achieved more success in learning the present continuous tense because of the convenience of this approach. The findings provide implications for introducing, prioritizing, and implementing the discourse-based approach in teaching grammar from the early stages of L2 learning to avoid probable errors.