(Luận văn thạc sĩ) the implementation of consciousness raising technique on grammar teaching to a class of second year non major students at hanoi national university of education a case study

Using inductive consciousness-raising tasks in teaching grammar rules is one of the possible solutions to the problems discussed above, because it not only relieve teachers from the burd

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -

TA THANH BINH

TECHNIQUE ON GRAMMAR TEACHING TO A CLASS OF SECOND-YEAR NON-MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI NATIONAL UNVIERSITY OF EDUCATION: A CASE STUDY

(Vận dụng thủ thuật xây dựng nhận thức ý nghĩa trong việc dạy ngữ pháp cho một lớp sinh viên năm thứ hai không chuyên ở Trường Đại Học Sư Phạm Hà Nội: Điển cứu)

PROGRAM I M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Hanoi, 2010

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

-*** -

TA THANH BINH

TECHNIQUE ON GRAMMAR TEACHING TO A CLASS OF SECOND-YEAR NON-MAJOR STUDENTS AT HANOI NATIONAL UNVIERSITY OF EDUCATION: A CASE STUDY

(Vận dụng thủ thuật xây dựng nhận thức ý nghĩa trong việc dạy ngữ pháp cho một lớp sinh viên năm thứ hai không chuyên ở Trường Đại Học Sư Phạm Hà Nội: Điển cứu)

PROGRAM I M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology Code: 60 14 10

Supervisor: Phung Ha Thanh, M.A

Hanoi, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationales of the study 1

1.2 Research problems and questions 2

1.3 Scope of the study 3

1.4 Methodology of the study 3

1.5 Significance of the study 4

1.6 Organization of the thesis 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Different approaches to grammar teaching 5

1.1.1 Zero-grammar approach versus form-focused approaches 5

1.1.2 Deductive versus inductive approach 6

1.2 Consciousness-raising 8

1.2.1 The concept of consciousness-raising 8

1.2.2 Characteristics of consciousness-raising 9

1.2.3 Consciousness-raising in relation to different approaches to grammar teaching 10

1.2.4 Consciousness-raising versus practice 11

1.2.4.1 The role of practice in second language teaching 11

1.2.4.2 The role of consciousness-raising in second language learning 12

1.3 Studies on learners’ preferences to inductive consciousness-raising tasks 13

1.4 Studies on effectiveness of inductive consciousness-raising tasks 14

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 15

2.1 The context and subjects 15

2.1.1 Teaching context 15

2.1.2 The subjects of the study 16

2.1.2 The researcher role 17

2.2 Procedure 17

2.2.1 Pre-treatment questionnaire 17

2.2.2 The treatment 18

2.2.3 Collection of worksheets 19

2.2.4 Post-treatment questionnaire 19

2.2.5 Data analysis 20

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 21

3.1 Which types of learning (the inductive consciousness-raising or the deductive approach) did the students prefer before and after the implementation? 21

3.2 What are the possible reasons for their preferences? 21

3.2.1 Reasons for the preference of deductive learning 22

3.2.2 Reasons for the preference of inductive consciousness-raising 23

3.3 How different were students’ evaluations on inductive consciousness-raising and deductive learning? 23

3.3.1 In terms of interestingness 24

3.3.2 In terms of difficulty 24

3.3.3 In terms of usefulness 25

3.4 What were students’ opinions about learning grammar rules without practice? 25 3.5 To what extent did students succeed in discovering the target rules? 26

3.5.1 Success rates from the analysis of worksheets 26

3.5.2 Success rates from the analysis of students’ self-reflection 28

3.5.3 Failure rates in comparison 29

3.5.4 Reasons for failure 30

3.5.5 Success rates and the difficulty degrees in comparison 31

3.6 To what extend, did they remember the rules that they had discovered by themselves? 31

3.6.1 Test results 31

3.6.2 Test results and success rates in comparison 32

CONCLUSION AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS 33

A Summary of main findings 34

B Implications 35

C Limitations and suggestions for further research 36

REFERENCES 38 APPENDICES

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Table 2 Subjects’ evaluations on the two types of learning in terms of

comparison

31

Table 9 Test results and success rates in comparison 32 Chart 1 Students’ success rate in discovering rules 27 Chart 2 Students’ self-reflection on their rules discovering 28

INTRODUCTION

1 Rationales of the study

According to Ellis (2006: 101), grammar has held and continues to hold a

central place in language teaching Indeed, grammar has played an important part in

language education, explaining why grammar still has occupied a considerable space in current language course-book materials Moreover, the question of how grammar should

be approached has been in the arena for discussion for a century, proving that teaching grammar is a matter of great concern by second language theorists In practice, a great amount of time in language teaching syllabuses has also been spent on grammar; and to many teachers teaching a language mainly involves dealing with its grammar

In Vietnam, the approach to grammar teaching that has been favoured by most teachers of English is the deductive one, where teachers play the role of knowledge providers and learners’ role is limited to receivers Such way of teaching grammar is not only tiring for teachers for they have to spend most of lesson time talking, presenting, explaining, and correcting grammar practice exercises, but learners also find it boring to attend long-lasting lessons in silence More importantly, deductive teaching does not foster learners’ autonomy because of its teacher-led quality As a result of the deficit in self-studying skills, learners have to depend greatly on the teacher for the main source knowledge, thus restricting their learning success

Using inductive consciousness-raising tasks in teaching grammar rules is one of the possible solutions to the problems discussed above, because it not only relieve teachers from the burden of speaking, enhance learners’ autonomy and create motivating learning environment but it is also expected to be effective in terms of explicit

knowledge gains and retention In an inductive grammar lesson, learners actively work with one another most of the time and the teacher just interferes when help is needed, hence enabling him/her to save a great deal of energy for presentation Moreover,

consciousness-raising tasks require learners to discover grammar rules for themselves; thus encouraging learners’ autonomy in the sense that if learners can find out rules for

themselves then they are making significant steps towards being self-reliant and

independent Furthermore, inductive consciousness-raising involves problem-solving activities, which are believed to be stimulating and motivating to the majority of learners

In terms of effectiveness, inductive learning involves great mental effort, and learners are actively engaged in the meaning-making process, consequently they are more

attentive and attain greater retention of the knowledge acquired

Though grammatical consciousness-raising tasks have a firm base in second language acquisition research and have become popular among theorists, they have not been widely used by practitioners There are several reasons accounting for this fact Some teachers are afraid that learners may not prefer the idea of discovering rules by themselves for they normally expect to get knowledge from their teachers Some project that learners may feel frustrated when learning without practice Others are concerned if inductive consciousness-raising is effective for learners with low levels of English

because it is suggested by some researchers that learners need enough proficiency to perform consciousness-raising tasks This paper describes a study to investigate whether this expectation has any basis

2 Research problems and questions

The study purposes to investigate learners’ preferences between the inductive conscious-raising and the traditional deductive approach to grammar teaching, reasons for their liking, their evaluations on two types of learning, their opinions regarding

learning without practice, and the effectiveness of inductive consciousness-raising tasks

Specifically, the study aims to address the following questions:

1) Which types of learning (the inductive consciousness-raising or the deductive approach) did the students prefer before and after the implementation?

2) What are the possible reasons for their preferences?

3) How different were students’ evaluations on inductive consciousness-raising and deductive learning?

4) What were students’ opinions about learning grammar rules without practice?

5) To what extent did students succeed in discovering the target rules?

6) To what extend, did they remember the rules that they had discovered by themselves?

3 Scope of the study

Consciousness-raising is a broad idea which can be applied to various fields of teaching and consciousness-raising itself can be either inductive or deductive The consciousness-raising implemented in this study is grammatical consciousness-raising, which is conducted inductively through six hypothesis making and testing steps

The implementation of consciousness-raising tasks, takes place within three lessons of grammar The first two lessons involve the rules of meaning regarding present continuous tense and modal verb “would” The third lesson deals with formal rules of indirect question

The study primarily focuses on studying grammatical conscious-raising from learners’ perspectives It also investigates how effective grammatical consciousness-raising is The two aspects of effectiveness investigated are learners’ ability to discover the target grammar rules and their retention of explicit knowledge after the

implementation

The subjects in focus are undergraduate students having the pre-intermediate level of proficiency in English They are English non-major students at Hanoi National University of Education

4 Methodology of the study

This is a study on grammatical consciousness-raising from learners’ perspective The subjects were a group of twenty-nine English non-major undergraduate students whose levels of English were pre-intermediate or below The implementation of three grammar lessons with consciousness-raising tasks was conducted in three consecutive weeks Data were collected before and after the implementation from pre-treatment and post-treatment questionnaires An additional data collection tool was a collection of

students’ worksheets The type of data analysis used in this study was descriptive

statistics

5 Significance of the study

In the first place, the research is expected to intensify the researcher’s

understanding of grammatical consciousness-raising, thus improving her own teaching quality Secondly, it is hoped to inspire other teachers of English to carry out further investigations into consciousness-raising, so that it can be employed effectively and widely in English language teaching

6 Organization of the thesis

The first part, Introduction, briefly introduce the rationales, research questions, methodology, scope and significance of the study

The main part of this paper is designed with three chapters as follows:

Chapter 1, the Literature Review, offers the theoretical background to this study

by reviewing different approaches to grammar teaching and discussing a number of studies on learners’ preferences and effectiveness of grammatical consciousness-raising

Chapter 2, the Methodology, reports the design of the study, the subjects, the data collection instruments used for this study and the statistical method to analyze the data

Chapter 3, the Findings and Discussion, provides an analysis of the data, the interpretation of the results and discusses some prominent issues arising from the study results

The last part, Conclusion, draws pedagogical implications including a number of recommendations for university teachers of English to use consciousness-raising tasks in teaching grammar rules It also points out some limitations of the study and suggestions for further investigations

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Different approaches to grammar teaching

According to Ellis (2002:167), the two main questions which have been debated

in the field of language pedagogy are:

1) Should we teach grammar at all?

2) If we should teach grammar, how should we teach it?

The differences among various approaches to grammar teaching stem from how they address these two above questions

1.1.1 Zero-grammar approach and form-focused approaches

Ellis (1985: 229) introduced three possible explanations for the first question: 1) the non-interface position; 2) the interface position and 3) the variability position

The non-interface position advanced by Krashen (Ellis, 1985: 229) distinguishes two types of knowledge: learnt knowledge and acquired knowledge Krashen (1982) (in

Ellis, 2002: 167) maintains that “formal instruction in grammar will not contribute to

the development of acquired knowledge - the knowledge needed to participate in

authentic communication”; therefore, there is no point in grammar teaching

On the contrary, the interface position lends credence to grammar teaching because these two types of knowledge are not entirely separate (Ellis, 1985: 234) A weak interface position which has been proposed by Seliger (1979) (in Ellis, 1985:234) states that formal instruction facilitates acquisition Seliger believes the learnt

knowledge of grammar rule may make the internalization of the rule easier and may facilitate the use of features which are acquired, but still only “shadow” (in Ellis, 1985: 234) A strong interface position states that two types of knowledge can interact, and explicit knowledge (learnt knowledge) can turn into implicit knowledge (acquired knowledge) through practice (Ellis, 1985: 235)

The variability position holds the idea that different kinds of knowledge are used

in different types of language performance; for example, formal instruction presumably

develops the type of knowledge that is required to undertake the kinds of tasks in

“discrete-point” tests (Ellis, 1985: 237) Therefore, Bialystok (1982) (in Ellis R., 1985:

244) suggests “instruction must consider the specific goals of the learner and attempt to

provide the appropriate form of knowledge to achieve those goals” As can be inferred

from the above discussion, the question of whether or not grammar should be taught depends on learners’ specific needs

The three positions support very different approaches to language teaching (Ellis, 2006: 97) Non-interface position leads to such zero-grammar approaches as: the Natural Approach and Total Physical; while the interface position provides a strong base for form-focused approaches Particularly, the weak interface position supports techniques that induce learners to attend to grammatical feature Examples of those techniques are Content-based Instruction and Task-based Language Learning Whereas, the strong interface position is the ground for Presentation-Practice-Production model (Ellis, 2006: 97) Finally, the variability position supports the combination of various methods

appropriate to specific teaching contexts, which serves as the base for Context-based Language Teaching or Post-method pedagogy

1.1.2 Deductive and inductive approaches

The answers for the question of how grammar should be taught are varied in accordance with the various existing approaches to second language teaching However, those approaches can be categorised under two broad terms: inductive approach and deductive approach Then the question can be simplified into whether grammar should

be taught deductively or inductively

A deductive approach is “an approach to language teaching in which learners

are taught rules and given specific information about a language” (Richard, Platt &

Platt, 1992: 98) Dealing with the teaching of grammar, the deductive approach can also

be called rule-driven learning because in such an approach, a grammar rule is explicitly presented to students and followed by practice applying the rule PPP model is a typical example of this approach (Richard, Platt & Platt, 1992: 98)

An inductive approach comes from inductive reasoning in which a reasoning progression proceeds from particulars to generalities (Felder & Henriques, 1995) (in

Widodo, 2006: 127) In inductive language teaching, “learners are not taught

grammatical rules or other types of rules directly but are left to discover or induce rules from their experience of using the language” (Richard, Platt & Platt, 1992: 99)

Examples of approaches that make use of the principle of inductive learning are Direct Method, Communicative approach, and Counselling Learning (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992: 99)

Of the two above approaches, which one is better? This question provokes a long-standing debate among theorists and practitioners

Sheen (1992) (in Mohamed, 2004: 228) states that the deductive approach, where the learners are explicitly taught the rules of particular features of the target language, is the more effective mean of teaching grammar Norris and Ortega (2000: 527), after investigating and comparing the effectiveness of second language instruction in

publications between 1980 and 1998, conclude that explicit instruction (referring to deductive instruction) is more effective than implicit one (referring to inductive

instruction)

However, Brown (1994: 105) states that an inductive approach “comforts more

easily to the concept of interlanguage development in which learners progress through possible stages of rule acquisition.” Similarly, Bourke (1996) (in Mohamed, 2004: 228)

believes that an inductive approach, whereby learners are encouraged to look for

regularities for themselves is more successful than the deductive one

There are a great number of researchers taking a middle ground in the debate between inductive and deductive teaching supporters Ellis (2006: 98), for example,

believes that “simple rules may best be taught deductively, while more complex rules

may best be taught inductively” and that “learners skilled in grammatical analysis are likely to fare better with an inductive approach than those less skilled” Other empirical

studies also show that some learners achieve better in deductive language lessons, while others perform better in inductive classes (Widodo, 2006: 129) The difference may be

due to the difference in learners’ cognitive styles which are associated with their

different neurological mechanisms (Eisenstein, 1987, in Widodo, 2006: 129) To sum up, both deductive and inductive presentations can successfully be applied depending on the cognitive style of the learner and the language structure presented

1.2 Consciousness-raising

1.2.1 The concept of consciousness-raising

Linguistically, the term consciousness-raising, “consciousness-raising” is

understood as “the deliberate attempt to draw the learner's attention specifically to

formal properties of the target language” (Rutherford & Sharwood-Smith, 1985: 274)

Ellis (2002: 168) states that “consciousness-raising involves an attempt to

equip the learner with an understanding of a specific grammatical feature - to

develop declarative rather than procedural knowledge of it.”

Both definitions given by Rutherford & Sharwood-Smith (1985: 274) and Ellis, R (2002: 168) are brief and broad They just mention the goals at which consciousness-raising aims but do not show how these aims can be achieved In their definition,

Richards, Platt & Platt (1992: 78) give more information on how to draw learners’

attention As they put it, consciousness-raising is “an approach to the teaching of

grammar in which instruction in grammar (through drills, grammar explanation, and other form-focused activities) is viewed as a way of raising learner’s awareness of

grammatical features of the language This is thought to indirectly facilitate second

language acquisition A consciousness-raising approach is contrasted with traditional approaches to the teaching of grammar, in which the goal is to instill correct

grammatical patterns and habits directly” (Richards, Platt & Platt, 1992: 78)

From the above definitions, it can hardly be figured out how

consciousness-raising is different from other traditional grammar-based methods and it is also not clear

to indicate the position of consciousness-raising in the swing of language teaching

approach pendulum These questions will be discussed further in the following sections

1.2.2 Consciousness-raising in relation to different approaches to grammar

teaching

1.2.2.1 The position of consciousness-raising in approaches to grammar teaching

Consciousness-raising is often claimed to hold a “middle-ground position”

between two extreme approaches to grammar teaching (Yip V., 1994: 124 and Nunan D., 1991: 151) At one end of the scale is the zero-grammar approach advocated by Krashen,

at the other end is traditional grammar based approaches Consciousness-raising stands for the pendulum swinging back but taking into account more recent findings of second language acquisition research as well as benefits of communicative approaches

It has to be pointed out, however, that grammatical consciousness-raising cannot

be considered simply as a movement “back to grammar” because it is characterized by several important differences to older approaches: first of all, it does not aim the

production of the target structure in the short term but focuses on long-term learning objectives, accepting that at the moment a structure is taught it may not be learnable for the learner (Yip V 1994: 125) Furthermore, grammar does not have to be taught in the form of explicit rules; the learner may also be led to grammatical insights implicitly Thirdly, the focus on meaning introduced by the communicative movement is not

abandoned and texts that have been produced for communication are preferred over concocted examples (Willis D and Willis J., 1996: 64)

1.2.2.2 Inductive and deductive consciousness-raising

According to Ellis (2002: 172), consciousness-raising can be either inductive or

deductive In the case of induction, “the learner is provided with data and asked to

construct an explicit rule to describe the grammatical feature which the data

illustrate”; whereas, in the case of deduction, “the learner is supplied with a rule which

is then used to carry out some task.” (Ellis, 2002: 172)

Mohamed (2004: 1) differentiates two types of consciousness-raising tasks He

explains that “a deductive task provided explicit explanations of a grammar structure

while an inductive task required learners to discover the grammar rules for themselves

If consciousness-raising activities are conducted inductively, they are quite

similar to theories of discovery learning According to Hammer (1987: 29), “discovery

techniques are those where students are given examples of language and told to find out how they work to discover the grammar rules rather than be told them.” Richard, Platt &

Platt (1992: 112) state that discovery learning based on the following principles:

a) Learners develop processes associated with discovery and inquiry by

observing, inferring, formulating hypotheses, predicting and communicating b) Teachers use a teaching style which supports the processes of discovery and inquiry

c) Textbooks are not the sole resources for learning

d) Conclusions are considered tentative not final

e) Learners are involved in planning, conducting, and evaluating their own learning with the teacher playing supporting role

1.2.3 Characteristics of consciousness-raising

Rutherford & Sharwood-Smith (1985: 280) state that “consciousness-raising is

considered as a potential facilitator for the acquisition of linguistic competence has nothing directly to do with the use of that competence”

Ellis (2002: 169) also points out that consciousness-raising is only directed at explicit knowledge, with no expectation that learners will use in communicative output a

particular feature that has been brought to their attention through formal instruction He

contrasts the characteristics of a consciousness-raising task with characteristics of

practice and concludes that the main difference between the two is

“raising does not involve the learner in repeated production” Below are

consciousness-raising task characteristics listed in Ellis (2002: 168)

1 There is an attempt to isolate a specific linguistic feature for focused attention

2 The learners are provided with data which illustrate the targeted feature and they may also be supplied with an explicit rule describing or explaining the feature

3 The learners are expected to utilise intellectual effort to understand the targeted feature

4 Misunderstanding or incomplete understanding of the grammatical structure

by the learners leads to clarification in the form of further data and description

or explanation

5 Learners may be required (although this is not obligatory) to, articulate the rule describing the grammatical structure

1.2.4 Consciousness-raising versus practice

1.2.4.1 The role of practice in second language teaching

The role of practice in second language teaching is a controversial topic which has been on the arena for discussion for the past few decades

A strong interface position, which is implicit in traditional grammar-based approaches, recognizes the connection between practice and use and maintains that practice enables learners to use the structure they have been taught in communicative situations (Larsen-Freeman D., 2003: 102)

However, Larsen-Freeman D (2003: 103) argues that “learners require time to

integrate new grammatical structures into their interlanguage systems; for instance, learners often produce forms that bear no resemblance to what has been presented to them of practiced.”

Ellis (2002: 170), an advocator of a weak interface position, after reviewing empirical and theoretical studies, also casts doubt on the efficacy of practice for

“practice will not lead to immediate procedural knowledge of grammatical rules, irrespective of its quantity and quality.”

Furthermore, Krashen (in Larsen-Freeman, 2003: 103), who advocates

non-interface position state that “there are numerous studies that confirm that we can

develop extremely high levels of language competence without any production at all”

and “there is no direct evidence that output practice leads to language acquisition.”

1.2.4.2 The role of consciousness-raising in second language learning

There is also no consensus on the role of consciousness in second language

learning As Schmidt (1990: 130) puts it, “the most common attitude towards

consciousness is one of skepticism” Seligers (1983: 187, in Schmidt, 1990: 129)

devalues the role of consciousness and states that “it is at the unconscious level that

language learning takes place” Krashen (1981, in Schmidt, 1990: 130) insists on the

little use of conscious learning in actual language production and comprehension Gregg (1984: 94), one of Krashen's harshest critics opposing Krashen's opinion that learning can never become “acquisition”, also agrees on the fact that most language learning is unconscious

According to (Schmidt,1990: 131), consideration of the role of consciousness in cognition and learning has been respectable over the recent decades The most

prominent supporters of consciousness-raising are Rutherford and Sharwood Rutherford

W & Sharwood-Smith M., (1985) examine the role of consciousness-raising in the light

of Universal Grammar They believe that “the sequence of language features as well as

the pace they are learned in is given by the learner, not the curriculum or the textbook and the certain language features can only be learned in a fixed sequence” Hence, in

their opinion, the function of grammar consciousness-raising is to highlight certain grammatical features for the learner to develop his or her awareness of them, then when

he or she is ready to insert these specific features into the developing the second

language system, they will acquire them Rutherford (1987: 25), furthermore, insists on the fact that language learners already have a broad knowledge of language of both

specific and universal kind to build on and he calls the language learning process “an

interaction of the universal with the specific” He consequently sees grammatical

consciousness-raising as a means of “illuminating the learner's path from the known to

the unknown”, in other words, “a facilitator for the acquisition of linguistic

competence”, as it is put in Rutherford & Sharwood-Smith (1985: 280)

Fotos (1994: 326) also agrees with Rutherford on the facilitating role of

consciousness-raising In her opinion, “the grammar consciousness-raising task is not

aimed at developing immediate ability to use the target structure but rather attempts to call learner attention to grammatical features, raising their consciousness of them, and thereby facilitating subsequent learner noticing of the features in communicative input.”

Ellis (2002: 171) shares the same idea that “consciousness-raising facilitates the

acquisition of grammatical knowledge needed for communication.” He claims

consciousness-raising is not only helpful in the formation of explicit knowledge – which

is of limited use in itself – as he believes, but also contributes to the acquisition of implicit knowledge He points out two ways in which consciousness-raising facilitates the acquisition of implicit knowledge:

1) It contributes to the processes of noticing and comparing and, therefore, prepares integration This process is controlled by the learner and will take place only when the learner is developmentally ready

2) It results in explicit knowledge Thus, even if the learner is unable to integrate the new feature as implicit knowledge, she can construct an alternative explicit

representation which can be stored separately and subsequently accessed when the learner is developmentally primed to handle it Furthermore, explicit knowledge serves

to help the learner to continue to notice the feature in the input, thereby facilitating its subsequent acquisition

He concludes that “consciousness-raising is unlikely to result in immediate

acquisition; more likely, it will have a delayed effect”

1.3 Studies on learners’ preferences of inductive consciousness-raising tasks

There have been only few studies investigating grammatical raising from a learner perspective

consciousness-Ranalli (2001) conducted a study of learners’ preferences between

consciousness-raising and traditional deductive approaches His study showed that the learners showed no clear preference though they acknowledged that consciousness-raising approach was more interesting Instead, most of learners took a practical

approach by expressing a preference for a teaching method that sensibly combines the

two because they supported productive practice activities which are usually associated with deductive learning (Ranalli, 2001: 3)

Mohamed (2004) investigated learners’ opinions about the use of deductive and inductive consciousness-raising tasks in the teaching of grammar The results of his study indicated that learners view both task types to be useful and there was no obvious preference for one task type over the other (Mohamed, 2004: 228)

1.4 Studies on the effectiveness of inductive conscious-raising tasks

There are a number of studies investigating the effectiveness of raising tasks (hereinafter to be referred as C-R tasks) in developing explicit knowledge

According to Ellis (2003: 164), “learners need sufficient proficiency to talk

metalingually about the target feature, and if they lack this, they may not be able to benefit to the same degree from a C-R task” He suggests C-R tasks may not be well-

suited to young learners and may not appeal to learners who are less skilled at forming and testing hypotheses about the language The problem here relates to whether learners are able to verbalise the target rules Sharwood-Smith (1981: 162) argues that the

articulation and learning of rules is not an element of necessity in C-R, because “C-R

can be accomplished without requiring of learners to talk about what they have become aware of”

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1 The context and subjects

2.1.1 The teaching context

The research was done in the Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education The Faculty of English is in charge of teaching two types of students: English-majored students are those who train to be teachers of English and the non-majors are those who learn English as a minor subject in their curriculum The present study involved English non-major students who generally do not have strong motivation

to learn English because their future jobs (as a teacher of math, philology, physics, chemistry and the like) have little thing to do with English But rather, they learn English just because it is a compulsory subject in the university curriculum Therefore, they do not have any communicative needs and passing the exam is their first and foremost goal

The course-book series used for English non-major students is Lifeline Students are supposed to finish two books Lifeline Elementary and Lifeline Pre-intermediate in three terms of fifteen weeks In each week students have four class hours of English In total, there are 180 class hours spent on two volumes of Lifeline, each of which consists

of 14 units In each unit, there are four main parts, namely grammar, vocabulary, reading, listening and speaking; however, speaking is less stressed in this course book series

Students have to take two mid-term exams and one end-term exam in each school term Each mid-term exam accounts for 25% of the final score; and 50% of the final result is attributed to the end-term exam The first mid-term exam consists of two subtests: a listening test and a writing test (focusing on grammatical structures) The second mid-term exam is a speaking test consisting of 3 parts, namely picture description, topic presentation and free questions and answers The end-term exam consists of 50 multiple choice questions focusing on grammar knowledge

As it is inferred from the text book and the nature of the end-term exam, the importance has been put on grammar knowledge

2.1.2 The subjects of the study

The subjects in this study were a group of twenty-nine second-year English major students at Hanoi National University of Education They were mathematics major students who are assumed to possess logical minds; therefore, it was expected that hypothesis making and testing might work for them

non-Furthermore, all of them were about nineteen or twenty year old, the age at which people are usually recognized for their creativity and open-mindedness, which means they were expected to have a more receptive view to new ideas as well as new methods of learning than older people

Their assumed level of proficiency in English was pre-intermediate, but their actual command of English is quite heterogeneous According to their previous end-term test results, three fifths of them are able to attain pre-intermediate and the rest of two fifth are just at elementary or lower levels As it was suggested by Ellis R (2003), their low competence of English might not enable them to talk metalingually about

grammatical features However, in the researcher’s opinion, it did not matter if they were allowed to use their mother tongue to verbalise the target grammar rules

As it was revealed from the pre-treatment questionnaire, the most popular model

of grammar lessons that the subjects had experienced was the deductive one (with the ranking of 72.4%) while the least frequently seen one was inductive teaching with C-R tasks with 82.7% students rating C-R as the least frequently seen This fact was not to suggest that all of them could be expected to prefer deductive learning when offered a choice because each individual would undoubtedly have a different learning style However, the frequent experience of deductive learning could affect their expectation about a grammar lesson: they would expect their teachers to explain everything and might feel frustrated with being asked to construct their own rules

All of the above features of the subjects made up a complicated case that is worth insightful investigations With regards to the research questions, some of the features might be positive while the others might contradict the results

For the subjects were all undergraduate students the two terms “subjects” and

“students” is used interchangeably in this study

2.1.3 The researcher role

The researcher played a role of an insider, who had close relationship with the subjects because she had been teaching them for one semester Primarily she was a practitioner rather than a researcher Her research aims were to gain insightful into her teaching contexts and solve problems that she had encountered

2.2 Procedure

The implementation and the data collection took five weeks on the whole In the first week, pre-treatment questionnaire sheets were delivered and collected Data from this first questionnaire was processed before the implementation of the three lessons In case the results showed that the majority of the subjects had already known about the target grammar rules, the contents of the three lessons would be changed The reason was there was no point in asking students to discover the rules that they had already mastered The three treatment lessons were conducted one by one in the three following weeks consecutively The students’ worksheets were handed out at the beginning and collected at the end of each lesson The post-treatment questionnaire was conducted in the fifth week, one week after the last treatment lesson

2.2.1 Pre-treatment questionnaire

The pre-treatment questionnaire was consisted of seven questions, with a mixture

of self-reporting, attitudinal and testing question types The three first questions inquired students’ past grammar learning experience and their opinions about the way of

grammar teaching that they had most frequently experienced In the question number four students were asked to make a choice between the inductive and deductive

procedures of grammar teaching The three last questions purposed to test their

knowledge about the target grammar rules

2.2.2 The treatment

According to Ellis R (2002: 172), consciousness-raising itself can be either inductive or deductive The inductive way of implementing consciousness-raising is

using C-R tasks, where “the learner is provided with data and asked to construct an

explicit rule to describe the grammatical feature which the data illustrate”

Willis D and Willis J (1996: 69) list seven categories of C-R task types:

i identify and consolidate patterns or usages;

ii classifying items according to their semantic or structural

characteristics;

iii hypothesis building, based on some language data, and then perhaps checked against more data;

iv cross-language exploration;

v reconstruction and deconstruction;

vi recall;

vii reference training

The C-R task type implemented in this study was the third one, the inductive hypothesis building Basing on that idea, the researcher designed three C-R grammar lessons, each of which consisted of six steps

Step 1: setting the scene (learners listen to, or read, a text in order to grasp basic meaning);

Step 2: comprehension questions (learners answer comprehension questions following the listening or reading texts);

Step 3: noticing (learners notice the form, and match form to meaning);

Step 4: making hypothesis (learners generate their own hypotheses);

Step 5: checking hypothesis (learners test their hypotheses with other examples); Step 6: confirming hypothesis (learners confirm their hypotheses)

All three grammar lessons were adapted from text materials in Lifeline intermediate by Tom Hutchinson and New Headway Pre-intermediate by Liz and John

Pre-Soars Lesson one was about “the present continuous tense with future meaning” (see appendix 3) Lesson two dealt with using “would” to talk about past habits (see appendix 4) And finally the structures of indirect questions were the focus of lesson three

The three above grammar items was chosen for the reason of convenience The materials available for these grammatical features were easier to be adapted into C-R tasks than those for the others

There are six tasks (equivalent to six steps mentioned above) in each lesson The teacher played a role as a guide who helped the students to understand the task

instructions Sometimes teachers had to explain the task instructions in Vietnamese so that every student was clear about what to do The students worked in groups or pairs in tasks one, two, three and five; however, they were asked to work alone in tasks four and six, where they had to write down their hypothesis about the rules Individual work was required here to make sure the students themselves discovered the target rules rather than simply copied their classmates’ work

2.2.3 Collection of worksheets

Each of the students’ worksheets consisted of six tasks In task four and task six, students were asked to write down the target rules in both Vietnamese and English; hence, only the answers for tasks four and six were analysed Each student had to hand one piece of worksheet at the end of each lessons (see appendix 3, 4, and 5)

2.2.4 Post-treatment questionnaires

Almost all of the questions in the two questionnaires were close-ended ones with defined answers There was only one question where students were asked to give their own reasons for their choices The nature of the questions is attitudinal, self-reporting and testing

The first questions of the post-treatment questionnaire were to inquire students’ evaluations on inductive consciousness-raising grammar teaching The second question aimed to inform whether students prefer C-R lessons or traditional deductive learning

The fourth question aimed to elicit students’ opinion about learning without practice and the next question was to check whether students had, in fact, found out the rules or not

At the end of the questionnaire, there were some questions to test students’ explicit knowledge of the target grammar rules

2) What are the possible reasons for their preferences?

3) How different were students’ evaluations on inductive consciousness-raising and deductive?

4) What were students’ opinions about learning grammar rules without practice? 5) To what extent did students succeed in discovering the target rules?

6) To what extend, did they remember the rules that they had discovered by themselves?

Data for almost all of the questions were calculated by percentage to compare the frequency of distribution The third question asked students to evaluate how interesting, difficult and useful were the three C-R lessons Each point in the scales of interestingness, difficulty and usefulness was given a number, with number four for the highest degree and number one for the lowest degree All the scores were recorded, then the Mean and Standard Deviation for each lesson or each learning type were calculated for

comparison The mean scores were interpreted under the following scheme:

3.26 – 4.00: Very interesting/ difficult/ useful

2.51 – 3.25: Somewhat interesting/ difficult/ useful

1.76 – 2.50: Somewhat boring/ easy/ useless

1.00 – 1.75: Very boring/ easy/ useless

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

3.1 Which types of learning (the inductive consciousness-raising or the deductive approach) did the students prefer before and after the implementation?

Results from both pre- and post-questionnaires show that the percentage of students favouring traditional deductive learning was higher than that of those

supporting C-R tasks Before the implementation, the percentage of students who

preferred deductive learning outweighed that of those who liked inductive learning (62.1% as opposed to 37.9%) However, after the three treatment lessons, the rate of students liking C-R increased from 37.9% to 43.8% Though the gap was narrowed, the percentage of students who preferred the traditional deductive approach was still higher than that of those supporting C-R (51.7% as compared to 48.3%)

There was a difference between learners’ preferences of two types of learning grammar However, the difference is not so significant and it can be concluded that learners showed no clear preferences between learning with C-R tasks and the traditional deductive learning This finding was coincident with other research findings on the same question (Ranalli, 2001 and Mohamed, 2004)

3.2 What are the possible reasons for their preferences?

Table 1: Reasons for students’ preferences

Learning Number R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 Others

Deductive 15 66.7% 46.7% 40.0% 13.3% 20.0% 31% 7% C-R 14 0 57.1% 85.7% 71.4% 37.5% 14.3% 7%

Note: R1: It is clearer to follow

R2: It is easier to understand the rules

R3: It is easier to remember the rules

R4: It is more interesting to learn

R5: It is more helpful for recalling and using the rules correctly

R6: It is more helpful for doing English tests

3.2.1 Reasons for the preference of deductive teaching

Regarding explanations for their preferences, students seemed like deductive learning for all reasons listed The most frequent reason (67.9%) quoted for traditional deductive lesson type was “it is clearer to follow”; whereas, the lowest figures (13.3%) was attributed to the reason of “it is more interesting to learn” These findings were in response to the earlier expectations that grammar rules presented by teacher were clearer

to follow but more boring to learn

From the students’ evaluations on two types of learning in terms of difficulty, it

is obvious that learning grammar deductively is much easier than working with C-R tasks (see section 3.3) This may be one of the reasons why they still prefer deductive learning while they highly valued consciousness-raising in terms of interestingness and usefulness (see section 3.3)

One student reported another reason rather than the six listed one He/she

claimed that “learning in this way (refer to C-R) turns me from ignorant to more

ignorant” (học kiểu này khiến em đã dốt lại càng dốt hơn) It can be inferred this student

did not like C-R because her limited resource of English did not enable her to work with

C-R tasks, thereby gaining nothing from the lessons The reason is “learners need

sufficient proficiency to talk metalingually about the target feature, and if they lack this, they may not be able to benefit to the same degree from a C-R task” (Ellis, 2003: 164)

In other words, learners’ level of proficiency affect their preferences in the sense that learners with a low level will not be able to perform C-R tasks; and consequently, they

will not like learning with C-R

Another explanation for some students’ unfavourable attitude towards C-R resulted from the fact that C-R excludes practice; while in their belief, practice played a

very important role (see section 3.4 for the discussion of practice) Their mind was engraved with the idea that learning and practice were always in parallel; therefore, it is difficult for them to accept the new idea of learning without practice

3.2.2 Reasons for the preference of C-R learning

Those who preferred C-R learning quoted five reasons, among which the two most common ones were “it is easier to remember the rules” (85.7%); and “it is more interesting to learn” (71.4%) None of those questioned thought “it is clearer to follow” C-R lessons and a very low percentage of them (14.3%) believed learning with C-R tasks is more helpful in doing English tests The actual results completely matched the researcher’s’ expected outcomes that C-R is more motivating and helpful in terms of memory

It is obvious that learning with C-R tasks motivated the students The degree of interestingness of C-R learning ranked by the students was higher than that of deductive

learning (see section 3.3.1) One student even wrote “the feeling when I find out the

rules myself is very interesting” (cảm giác mình tự tìm ra qui tắc rất thú vị) It can be

said that learning with C-R tasks was preferred by some students due to its power of motivating learners

In conclusion, the students who were fond of the traditional deductive approach

to grammar teaching gave credence to the fact that it was clearer to follow and easier to understand These students did not like C-R because this way of teaching did not include practice and their low competence in English did not allow them to benefit much from C-R tasks which were thought to be more challenging The most common reasons for the students’ preference of inductive consciousness-raising were attributed to its power

in motivating learners and facilitating their memory capacity

3.3 How different were students’ evaluations on inductive consciousness-raising and deductive learning lessons?

Somewhat interesting

Somewhat boring

Very boring

Somewhat difficult

Somewhat easy

Very easy