Abstract:
ChamranForm-Focused Instruction Types in
Teaching Grammar to Iranian High
School EFL Learners
A. H. Shokouhi’
Abstract
Consciousness-raising (CR) task is a new way of teaching grammar
developed in communicative contexts although little has been written on the
effectiveness of CR tasks in EFL setting. The present study is an attempt to
investigate the impact of CR tasks in Iranian EFL setting by comparing them
with deductive, grammar lessons common in the Iranian schools. The
subjects of this study were 80 EFL pre-university male students who were
randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control one. The control
group received three ordinary teacher-fronted, deductive lessons, a common
way of teaching methodology in Iran, on three grammatical structures
(adverb placement, indirect object placement and the use of relative clause).
The experimental group, however, was treated with three ‘consciousness-
raising’ (CR) tasks dealing with the same target structures. The results
showed that in the short-run, CR tasks were as effective as deductive
approach in promoting the learners’ grammatical knowledge while in the
long-run, the CR group maintained their gains more effectively than the
deductive group. The conclusion is that CR tasks can function more
effectively than deductive approach if the following conditions are met: (a)
performing the learners with feedback whenever they encounter a problem in solving the
52 Consciousness-raising tasks versus deductive approach ...
tasks; (¢) grouping the learners in such a way that at least one learner in each
group would be more proficient than the other members to help the less
proficient ones understand and discover the rules more effectively.