The Effects of Using Pedagogic Corpus as Target Formulas for Direct Instruction in an Academic Writing Class

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of academic formula instruction using target formulas chosen from pedagogic corpus, on the use of the target formulas in an academic essay writing test, and the academic essay writing test scores. Two intact groups of Diploma in Computer Science students assigned as the experimental and control groups participated in the study. Each group consists of forty mixed ability ESL learners who were enrolled in an academic writing course. The study addressed two research questions. (1) What are the effects of formula instruction on the students' use of the target formulas? (2) What are the effects of formula instruction on the students' academic writing performance?