THE EFFECT OF TEACHING PUNCTUATION MARKS EXPLICITLY ON OMANI EFL LEARNERS WRITING ABILITIES

This is a research study about teaching punctuation marks explicitly and its effects on EFL learners` writing abilities. To do this, 40 Omani EFL learners at intermediate level from Sohar College of Applied Sciences, Oman were selected. Ministerial placement test homogenized students according to their level of proficiency. A pretest was applied to ensure students similar knowledge on the basis of punctuation marks. Then, treatment was provided for the experimental group of learners and finally another writing test as a posttest was applied to measure the results. Results revealed that teaching punctuation marks explicitly doesn’t have any effect on the learners` writing abilities in that college.