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Presenter
Mehri Jalali
Islamic Azad University-Naraq Branch
Abbas Zare-ee
Assisstant Professor,
University of Kashan

Title
The Impact of using consciousness-Raising Tasks on English learners’ Grammar Test Performance

Abstract

The necessity of teaching grammar in language classes has been a matter of great controversy in discussions of instructed second language acquisition. Yet, strong support for the value of grammar teaching has come from many studies on “noticing”, “teachability”, “inadequacy of merely meaning-focused teaching”, and “improved learning outcomes”.   The primary purpose of this study was to examine the probable effects of consciousness-raising tasks on grammar test performance of Iranian high school EFL learners. Attempts were made to explore differential effects across grammatical structures like dummy subjects, passive verbs, the present perfect tense, and modal verbs.

To this end, from among high school first grade female students, 60 homogeneous subjects were randomly selected and divided into control and experimental groups. The selected structures were presented through teacher fronted grammar classes for both groups. Before starting the treatment, a pretest was administered to both groups and t-test result showed no significant differences in their information about the grammatical structures under study. The control group worked on grammar exercises in their textbook whereas the experimental group worked on consciousness-raising episodic dialogs. At the end of the experiment, all subjects received a post-test. The results of the analyses of data showed significant f values on different grammatical structures (i.e. dummy subject, passive verbs, present perfect tense and modal verbs). In addition, using a Scheffe test indicated that except passive verbs, the treatment had a significant effect on learning all other grammatical structures.