The relationship between instructional differences and learning

The study focuses on the relationship between instructional differences and learning outcomes of learners studying english preparatory program at the university level. In order to establish a background for the experimental study, a survey was carried out to find out the opinions of english teachers, specialist teaching staff of faculties and students about the effectiveness of english preparatory programs of some universities in north cyprus. The medium of instruction of these universities is english and students who are not proficient in using the language skills at least at the intermediate level are required to take the english preparatory program before beginning to study at the faculty programs. After obtaining the opinions of relevant participants, the experimental study was carried out at the english preparatory school of one these universities. The official language teaching program was integrated with a more communicative teaching program for two experimental groups. The results of the experimental study revealed that the experimental groups performed in exams significantly better than other groups following the official program only.

The author obtained his PhD. in Language Testing and Program Evaluation, from Essex University. His teaching interests are on language testing and program evaluation, research techniques, developing communicative writing skills, teaching integrated language skills, and translation techniques.