The learners’ acquisition of certain English grammatical morphemes (for example, plural- s and the progressive –ing). The results showed differences between the ‘natural order’ and the relative accuracy with which these classroom learners produced them. For example,students usually supplied both the auxiliary be and the –ing ending (for example, ‘He’s playing ball’). However, they also produced one or more of the morphemes in places where they did not belong (‘He’ want a cookie’).
These findings provided evidence that an almost exclusive focus on accuracy and practice of particular grammatical forms. This instruction that depended on repetition and drill of decontextualized sentences –did not seem to favour the development of comprehension, fluency, or communicative abilities either.