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This article reports on the results of a process-product study investigating possible relationships between instructional differences and learning outcomes in a communicatively-based ESL programme. To investigate instructional differences, sixty hours of classroom observation data were collected from three classes of adult intermediate-level learners using an observation scheme which was particularly sensitive to the communicative orientation of second language instruction. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses of these data revealed that there were differences in the ways in which this instructional methodology was implemented. To determine whether these instructional differences contributed to variation in improvement, learners' pre- and post-test scores on seven proficiency measures were examined in an analysis of co-variance. The results indicated that some learners improved more than others on particular measures (e.g. speaking, listening and discourse test) and this difference appeared to be related to variation in classroom instruction. The results are discussed in terms of the need to include both a process and a product component in classroom-centred research.
Nina Spada (Mon,) studied this question.