USING CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING TASKS TO HELP BASIC SCHOOL PUPILS TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR LEARNING OF SUBJECT-VERB-AGREEMENT (SVA)
Abstract
This research work was aimed at investigating the effect of consciousness-raising (CR) tasks on basic school pupils’ understanding and use of SVA. The study was conducted at a Basic School in the Assin North Municipality in the Central Region of Ghana to find out whether CR which has been used in a science lesson will produce positive impact in English Language lessons. All the 30 Junior High School pupils were purposively sampled to participate in the study. Since the problem was a classroom issue that required immediate attention, action research design was used. Data collection occurred at three stages; pre-intervention stage, intervention stage and post-intervention stage. A pre-intervention test was designed to test the pupils’ understanding of SVA. Intervention activities were carried out after the pre-intervention test using the consciousness-raising tasks. A post-test was conducted after the intervention to find out the impact of the intervention on pupils’ performance in SVA. The findings of the study showed that varied SVA rules and types, rules not well explained and teachers’ unsuitable teaching methods and confusion towards SVA teaching are some of the causes of pupils’ difficulty in mastering SVA concept among the basic school pupils used for the study. The data collected showed that CR tasks are effective in promoting learner’s accurate use of Subject-Verb-Agreement (SVA) in a relaxed condition.
Article visualizations:
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Anderson, H. K., & Donkoh, K. E. (2016). Problems of Teaching and Learning in Basic Schools-The Case of Ewusa Demonstration Basic School, Ghana. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 3(4).
Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in second language acquisition, 24(2), 143-188.
Ellis, R. (1993). Talking shop: Second language acquisition research: how does it help teachers?. ELT journal, 47(1), 3-11.
Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (1990). Instructed second language acquisition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Fotos, S. (1993). Consciousness raising and noticing through focus on form: Grammar task performance versus formal instruction. Applied Linguistics, 14, 385-407.
Idek, S., Fong, L. L., & Sidhu, G. K. (2013). The Use of Consciousness-Raising Tasks in Learning and Teaching of Subject-Verb Agreement. English Language Teaching, 6(6), 113-122.
Klu, E. K. (2014). An Analysis of Grammatical Concord in Selected Examination Scripts of Students of the Ghana Technology University College. International Journal of Educational Sciences, 7(3), 727-731.
Long, M. H., Allen, W., Cyr, A., Lemelin, C., Ricard, E., Spada, N., & Vogel, P. (1980). Reading English for academic study. New York: Newbury House.
Schmidt, R. (1990). The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11, 129-158.
Svalberg, A. M. L. (2012). Language awareness in language learning and teaching: A research agenda. Language Teaching, 45(3), 376-388.
Thornbury, S. (2009). How to teach grammar? Malaysia: Longman.
Ting, S. H., Mahadhir, M., & Chang, S. L. (2010). Grammatical errors in spoken English of university students in oral communication course. GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies, 10(1).
Ting, S. H., Mahadhir, M., & Chang, S. L. (2010). Grammatical errors in spoken English of university students in oral communication course. Journal of Language Studies, 10(1), 53-69.
Wee, R. (2009). Source of errors: an interplay of interlingual influence and intralingual factors. European Journal of Social Science, 11(2), 349-359.
Wee, R. Sim, J., & Jusoff, K. (2010). Verb-form errors in EAP writing. Educational Research and Review, 5(1), 16-23.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v0i0.2771
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
Copyright (c) 2019 Ruby Jecty, Sylvester Donkoh, Emmanuel Kofi Adusie
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2015-2023. European Journal of Education Studies (ISSN 2501 - 1111) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library (Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei). All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All authors who send their manuscripts to this journal and whose articles are published on this journal retain full copyright of their articles. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).