Using educational graphics interchange format to enhance the interactive learning for grammatical development

ABSTRACT

Interactive learning environments provide a variety of instructional tools including educational graphics interchange format (GIF) and PowerPoint presentations which facilitate delivering stimulating and motivating lessons. This study examined the potentials of visual tools for grammatical development by administering GIFs as the educational intervention based on strategies suggested by the computer-assisted nonlinear dynamic approach. A mixed methods research was used to concurrently triangulate different strands of data on the effects of educational GIFs on grammatical proficiency development among randomly sampled adolescent and adult participants. The interpretations were made based on methodological triangulation of QUAN + QUAL data and running one-way analysis of variance. Pedagogically, the findings confirm the efficacy of animated educational GIFs for enhancing second language learners’ grammatical development in mastering progressive tenses (present, past, and future).

KEYWORDS:

• Grammatical proficiency
• computer-assisted nonlinear dynamic approach (CANDA)
• communicative skills
• psychological factors
• graphic interchange files (GIFs)

Acknowledgements

The research was supported by the Zhejiang Shuren University Basic Scientific Research Special Funds (No. 2023XZ022).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Ethical statements

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Zhejiang Shuren University. The study was conducted following the Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all participants and/or their legal guardians.

Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Zhejiang Shuren University Basic Scientific Research Special Funds (No. 2023XZ022).

Notes on contributors

Jie Lou

Jie Lou is an associate professor at Zhejiang Shuren University. He received his Master’s Degree from University of Nottingham in English Language Teaching. His research interests include applied linguistics, English teaching, and second language acquisition. He has published many papers in Chinese journals like Modern Foreign Languages, Foreign Languages Research, etc.