Impact of Consciousness-Raising Activities on Young English Language Learners ’ Grammar Performance

Grammar Consciousness-Raising (GCR) is an approach to teaching of grammar which learners instead of being taught the given rules, experience language data. The data challenge them to rethink, restructure their existing mental grammar and construct an explicit rule to describe the grammatical feature which the data illustrate (Ellis, 2002). And also GCR approach encourages learners to pay attention to language form (Richards & Smidth, 2002). The present study aimed to consider the effectiveness of grammar consciousness-raising activities on the development of young EFL learners’ grammar performance and also to study the appropriateness of consciousness-raising for young learners. The participants were 60 young Iranian male and female pre-intermediate students with the age range of 11 to 16. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups. The Experimental group was exposed to grammar consciousness-raising activities based on three techniques of Recall, Reconstruction, and Bolding-Underlying while the control group was trained by deductive grammar teaching. A grammar test was administered to the participants before and after the treatment as pretest and posttest. And also by applying a questionnaire to the experimental group, the learners showed their attitude toward consciousness-raising. The results revealed that grammar consciousness-raising activities have a significant effect on the development of young learners’ grammar performance and consciousness-raising is suitable for young learners.


Introduction
Learning English as a foreign language always is a big challenge for the learners.The most challenging part is when the learners find the language systematic.It means that EFL learners need to equip their knowledge of language with certain amount of rules in order to be proficient.Lack of grammar knowledge causes not to achieve proficiency level of a foreign language so that knowing certain amount of structure is mandatory; however, all grammar components will not be learnt necessarily.Language learners face grammar difficulty when the rules are presented by the teachers, and such difficulty is more challenging especially for EFL learners because the language is not spoken in their daily life.
Grammar is always within the language and should be seen as an inseparable part.As Batstone (1994) and Ramirez (1995) defined grammar as a vast and various phenomenon which vitalizes form, meaning and use, it should not be seen as only a set of despotic structures and fixed rules in the language.Grammar is a component of all productive and receptive skills.Therefore, it cannot be ignored, it is better to experience simplifying and facilitating ways of learning grammar.In this path, teachers can equip learners with certain amount of output and help them to put grammar into effective use by applying grammar consciousness-raising approach in English classrooms.
Although consciousness-raising approach can be seen a preferable method for teaching grammar, schools still prefer to follow traditional approaches in this regard.On the other hand, the majority of EFL learners are not skillful enough and do not have adequate knowledge of grammar.Learners who are studying English in their own countries as a foreign language are not usually proficient English language users and they usually need to be provided with necessary skills, this is where the idea of considering the impact of consciousness-raising activities on young English language learners' grammar performance and providing EFL learners with grammar consciousness-raising activities comes in mind.

Background of the Study
The focus of teaching grammar has shifted from teacher's task in teaching grammar to the learners' task in learning grammar and putting it into practice and use.In order to satisfy the needs of the English language classes raised by the shift in the focus and find appropriate ways to teach the grammar component, the application of consciousness-raising activities in English language classes can be investigated.

Consciousness-Raising
According to Rutherford and Smith (1985), the term consciousness-raising (CR) refers to the intentional effort to attract the learners' attention especially to the formal features of the target language and it aims to attract the learners' attention to the existing gap between their interlanguage system and the native speakers' rules of the foreign language.In CR approach, learners can structure their interlanguage system (Rutherford, 1987) and it facilitates the process of noticing, hypothesizing how language works, structuring the knowledge of language system (Batstone, 1994;Doughty & Williams, 1998;Samuda, 2001;Schmidt, 1990Schmidt, , 1995;;Spada, 1997;Swain, 1993;Venkatagiri & Levis, 2007).Ellis (2002) also believes that consciousness-raising can be presented to the learners inductively or deductively.In his point of view, inductive way is such a method that the learners are provided with some data, then they are required to formulate a rule to explain the grammatical feature and a deductive way is such a method that the students are provided with an explicit rule, then they are asked to do some tasks.

Consciousness-Raising Activities
As Svalberg (2005) defines, consciousness-raising activities are related with a student-centered class.According to Willis and Willis (1996), consciousness-raising activities work as a guideline which encourages the learners to think about samples of language and encourages them to draw their own conclusions about how the language works and they can appear based on spoken or written texts in the forms of conversation or story.To make the characteristics of consciousness-raising activities clearer, Ellis (2002) points out that "consciousness-raising activities are 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" (p.169).

Grammar Consciousness-Raising
With the term GCR, the question of "what is grammar consciousness-raising?" comes to mind.Richards and Schmidt (2002) believe that grammar consciousness-raising makes learners focus on language form which then leads to indirect language acquisition.This approach is followed by a set of goals.According to Willis (1996), grammar consciousness-raising helps students know and generate target language and gain learning objectives in a long period of time.In fact, learning objectives in the short time is not the purpose of grammar consciousness-raising.And also it aims to introduce grammar in the form of implicit and inductive rules to the learners and grammatical points should not be taught in an explicit and deductive way.
Furthermore, the approach is followed by a set of functions.According to Rogers (1994), the function of grammar consciousness-raising is to avoid fossilization of errors and help learners acquire the grammatical rules of second language.According to Rutherford and Smith (1985), function of grammar consciousness-raising can be seen as a highlighter of certain grammatical features for the learners in order to develop their awareness.Then they will be ready to insert these certain grammatical features into their developing language system.

Knowledge of Grammar
One important question is that if teaching grammar is essential, how should teachers teach it?What really is important in effective teaching and learning English grammar is how apprehensible all grammar rules are explained, and also enough supportive exercises with real life content are needed to be practiced.One of the tasks of a grammar is to describe the form of language.And in order to account for the form of language, grammar needs to be taught.According to Ellis (2006), two essential elements are when and how to teach grammar.He believes that both dimensions of form and meaning need to be emphasized and there should be an opportunity for the learners to practice forms in communicative activities and the importance of focusing more strongly on forms that are problematic for the learners should be emphasized and also he believes grammar is viable when it is integrated into communicative activities which focus on form.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of grammar consciousness-raising activities on the development of young EFL learners' grammar performance.The researchers were also interested in studying the suitability of consciousness-raising for young learners.In order to meet the objectives of the study, the following research questions were posed: Q1.Do grammar consciousness-raising activities have any effect on the development of young EFL learners' grammar performance?Q2.Is consciousness-raising suitable for young learners?

Participants
Sixty Iranian young male and female pre-intermediate learners at an English language institute in Tehran, Iran, took part in this study.Their age range was from 11 to 16.The participants, as the sample of the study, were chosen from available classes in the same level; therefore, there was no randomization in selecting the participants.However, the selected classes were randomly assigned to two groups, 30 participants (three classes) as experimental group were exposed to GCR activities and 30 participants (three classes) as control group were exposed to deductive grammar teaching.All learners were trained through the same number of grammatical points, grammatical sessions, and also by the same teacher.

Instruments
As the first purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of grammar consciousness-raising, a couple of instruments were used to collect data.A researcher-made grammar test as a pretest was administered at the beginning of study.This test consisted of 60 multiple-choice grammar items which covered all the grammar points included in the material and were supposed to be taught in the treatment phase of the study, i.e., consciousness-raising and traditional approaches.The test aimed at measuring the learners' grammar performance before teaching grammar points.The content validity of the test was examined by two EFL experts and the weak items and alternatives were modified.The statistical analysis showed that the scores obtained from the administration of the test enjoyed the acceptable index of reliability and normal distribution.
Grammar consciousness-raising activities were also used in the treatment phase.The experimental group was trained through activities in groups and pairs (not individually) and the control group was taught through deductive grammar teaching approach.The grammar consciousness-raising activities were designed and structured in six steps, and based on three techniques and in the forms of written and conversational texts delivered by the teacher.It should be mentioned that the teacher was one of the researchers of the study.
The same researcher-made grammar test was administered to the participants once again as the posttest of the study to measure the learners' development at grammar component after the treatment.Because the time gap between the administrations of the test as pretest and posttest was as long as a semester (12 weeks), the probable test-wise and practice effects was minimum.
In order to investigate the second research question which was qualitative, a questionnaire was designed by the researchers which consisted of 20 items.The items were in the form of statements.Five-point Likert Scale was used to rate the items, in which 5 stands for strongly agree, 4 for agree, 3 for no idea, 2 for disagree, and 1 for strongly disagree.The questionnaire was conducted and administered just in experimental group and all items were about the participants' attitude toward consciousness-raising.The purpose was to study the suitability of consciousness-raising for young learners between 11-16 years old.To ensure the validity of the questionnaire, the first draft of the questionnaire was examined by two EFL experts, and the content validity of the questionnaire was confirmed after some modifications.And also to ensure the reliability of the questionnaire, the Cronbach's Alpha reliability index was calculated.The Persian translated version of the questionnaire was administered to ensure the comprehensibility of the questionnaire to all learners as well.

Research Design
The design of this quasi-experimental study was a pretest, treatment and posttest.The study contained two groups, the experimental group and control group.The study included the administration of pretest, treatment, and posttest.As the study was quasi-experimental, it did not include randomization.The design of the study was as follows: To conduct the research and to meet the objectives of the study a pretest was administered in thirty minutes to both groups at the beginning and before the treatment in order to receive the initial grammar performance of groups.By administering the pretest, the initial data about learners' grammar performance were obtained.Then the experimental group received treatment and was exposed to some special conditions by using grammar consciousness-raising activities based on written texts and in conversational forms and based on three consciousness-raising techniques of Recall, Reconstruction and Bolding-Underlying, and the learners worked in groups and pairs rather than individually; whereas, the control group did not receive such a treatment, and the control group was trained deductively by teaching grammar based on practice and traditional approaches, and in this way, the researchers aimed to provide a baseline for comparison.According to Ellis (1991), and Willis and Willis (1996), the learners in experimental group were involved in inductive grammar consciousness-raising activities which consisted of six steps as the following: 1-Setting the scene: Students are given a text with a special structure and grammatical form.The text should be authentic and should have adequate examples of grammar structure inside itself to make learners able for grasping basic meaning and processing the meaning better.

2-Comprehension questions:
The text appears as a piece of reading or speaking for the learners instead of grammar.The text has some comprehension questions to make sure that the message is transferred.
3-Noticing: One of the techniques can be highlighting and underlying the target structure in the text, in this technique the sentences are kept in the text and the structure is not pulled out and analyzed.Learners by highlighting or underlying structure, notice the form and match the form to meaning and by adequate examples which exist in the context they see the usage of target structure in the text.
4-Hypothesizing: Grammar CR activities can be done in pairs or individually.Learners in pairs or alone, make their own assumption and formula about the grammar point in their mind and present it.When the learners present their assumption it is not necessary for them to have perfect grammar explanation and they do not have to cover the entire grammar point correctly, just increasing their awareness of how the target grammar functions in English is satisfying.
5-Checking hypothesis: Learners will check their assumption with different examples 6-Confirmation of hypothesis: In this stage, the learners' assumption will be confirmed by the teacher.For those learners who are not exposed to consciousness-raising or have low ability or are not very good at forming hypothesis, if the teacher explains in the form of a ten-minute grammar explanation then the purpose of consciousness-raising will be lost and the learners who are good at forming hypothesis will believe their assumptions had no value; therefore, the teacher ought not to waste much time correcting wrong assumptions, instead he highlights correct assumptions by writing them on the board.In CR activities, the teacher is not necessarily the source of knowledge; he is the confirmer and summarizer of the knowledge posed by the students.
According to Willis and Willis (1996), Learners may be required to perform CR on different kinds of operation such as: identify / consolidate, classify (semantic / structural), hypothesis building/ checking, cross-language exploration, reconstruction / deconstruction, recall, reference training, and bolding-underlying.The learners in the experimental group were trained by the three following consciousness-raising operations while dealing with the process of consciousness-raising.
1-Recall: Students read the original text first.Then the original text is covered, students read a re-write of the original text which has some changes in contrast to original one, students have no access to original text while they are reading re-write.Then they should try to remember original text and find the language points and differences.In recall, the significant sections of the text are highlighted by the students.The goal of recall is to remember the main components of a text.
2-Reconstruction: Students read the original text first.Then the original text is covered, students will have a re-write of the original text which some parts are omitted and there are some double-spaced instead.Here teacher is a reader and dictates the original text.While dictating, students should listen carefully and compare what they are hearing with what they are seeing and take notes.Then they have time to reconstruct the text again and find the language points.Like recall, there are some changes between original and re-write texts.In reconstruction, students are supposed to manipulate language to uncover the main patterns.
3-Bolding-Underlying: Students read the original text first.Then the original text is covered.Then they will read a re-write with some parts underlined and bold.In contrast to recall and reconstruction, there is no change in re-write.Students should pay attention to bolding and underlying parts.The purpose of this technique is to attract students' attention toward language points and they can see the usage of them practically in the sentences.
Then the progress was measured by the posttest for both groups after the treatment for the experimental group and grammar sessions based on traditional approach for the control group were completed.The administration of the posttest provided the researchers with the required data for research question one.Then for studying the second research question, the questionnaire was administered to the experimental group.

Results
In order to provide an answer to research question one which investigated whether grammar consciousness-raising activities had any effect on development of young EFL learners' grammar performance, several statistical analyses were performed.The results of the skewness analysis, as shown in the Table 1, revealed that the assumption of normality was observed in the distribution of the pretest scores of the two groups (1.45) for the control group and (0.52) for the experimental group, all falling within the range of (-1.96 and +1.96).In order to check if there was any significant difference between the two groups regarding their grammar performance, an independent t test was carried out to make sure, the initial existing difference was not significant and there was equality between the two groups.As is evident in the Table 2, since the probability associated with the F-observed value (0.15) was higher than the significant level of (0.05); therefore, two groups were homogenous in terms of their variances.In addition, the probability associated with the t-observed value (0.73) was higher than the significant level of (0.05).It was safely concluded that the two groups belonged to the same population in terms of their grammar performance before the treatment.The results of the skewness analysis, as shown in the Table 3, revealed that the assumption of normality was observed in the distribution of the pretest scores of the two groups (0.82) for the control group and (0.11) for the experimental group, all falling within the range of (-1.96 and +1.96).An independent t test was run to compare the mean scores of the control and experimental groups on the grammar posttest.As Table 4 shows, since the probability associated with the F-observed value (0.4) was higher than the significant level of (0.05); therefore, two groups were homogenous in terms of their variances.In addition, the probability associated with the t-observed value (0.00) was lower than the significant level of (0.05).Based on these results, it can be concluded that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the two groups on grammar posttest.So the null hypothesis as the use of grammar consciousness-raising activities has no statistically significant effect on young EFL learners' grammar performance was rejected.That is to say, grammar consciousness-raising activities had a significant impact on the performance of EFL learners on the grammar test.To determine the impact of the grammar consciousness-raising activities on grammar performance, a paired samples t test was also conducted for the mean achievement (Gain scores) of the both groups on the pretest and posttest.Table 5 presents the descriptive statistics for the performances of the two groups on the grammar pretest and posttest.To check progress at each group, two paired samples t test were run.As indicated in Table 6, both groups had significantly improved their grammar performance.However, based on the results of the independent t tests reported in the previous parts, the mean difference between the pretest and posttest of the experimental group was significant.The suitability of consciousness-raising for young learners was evaluated by estimating the frequencies and percentages of participants' answers to the questionnaire.The Cronbach's Alpha reliability index was calculated as index of reliability for the questionnaire.The Cronbach's Alpha reliability of the 20 items of the questionnaire is .87(Table 7).Therefore, it can be concluded that the questionnaire enjoyed reliability..8720 As Table 8 shows, at least 50% of the participants strongly agreed or agree with all the statements.It shows that the learners had positive attitudes toward the consciousness-raising technique.Predictably, 80% of the participants considered consciousness-raising technique as a useful way for the development of their grammar performance (item 5) and really believed in hypothesizing grammar (item 15).More than 83% believed that consciousness-raising technique changed the class atmosphere and helped the teacher to create a cheery and active class (item 16).More than 76% of the participants strongly agreed or agreed with items 4, 7, 8, and 19, which all referred to the usefulness of consciousness-raising technique in the grammar sessions of the class.In fact, the participants believed that such a technique made them more interested in grammar, because it increased their attention and caused to find grammar clues.

Discussion
The findings of the study are in line with (Amirian & Abbasi, 2014;Amirian & Sadeghi, 2012;Doughty & Williams, 1998;Fotos & Ellis, 1991;Fotos, 1994;Moradkhan & Sohrabian, 2009;Yip, 1994) who all support the use of consciousness-raising activities for developing grammatical structure, and all believe that consciousness-raising activities are more effective, means of developing learners' grammar.The findings of the study are also in line with (Amirian & Abbasi, 2014;Amirian & Sadeghi, 2012) in the way that consciousnessraising activities make a great enthusiasm in learners for learning grammar.
The findings are not in line with (Amirian& Abbasi, 2014) in the way that this study shows that GCR activities can make a high degree of development even in grammar performance of non-proficient learners and the amount of development is not less than amount of perception by proficient learners; therefore, it can be said that GCR activities even can be more effective for non-proficient learners than proficient ones.This study also reveals that the nature of CR leads learners to be aware of their learning process, and it enhances learners' curiosity about grammar points, and in CR, the teacher is just the summarizer and confirmer of correct assumptions.Eventually, Ellis (2002) criticizes that CR may not be suitable for young learners and just it can be applied to interested learners in learning by doing in elementary level and in the way of using learners' first language.But in this case, the findings are not in line with Ellis (2002) in the way that the findings of the study reveal that the usage of CR is absolutely appropriate for young learners, it can be applied to higher level students as well as beginners without using their first language.

Conclusion
According to the obtained results of the study, it can be claimed that learning grammar through consciousness-raising is more effective and beneficial than traditional approaches; however, the effect of traditional approaches will not be ignored.And the findings revealed that the experimental group and control group both enjoyed the development in their grammar performance, but the significant development in the experimental group distinguishes them from each other.Therefore, this study concluded that grammar consciousness-raising activities have direct positive effect on the learners' application of English language grammar.
Furthermore, grammar consciousness-raising is fruitful for the teachers.By applying consciousness-raising technique, the teacher is not the source of knowledge anymore.He is just the summarizer and confirmer so that he does not need to spend much time on grammar explanations.In spite of the fact that the learning of grammar patterns happens slowly, grammar consciousness-raising activities are time saving in formulating grammar hypothesis and time management happens properly because in such a technique, learners learn by themselves.
The results of the study open a new perspective to the English language teachers in the way to take the opportunity of experiencing a different approach in teaching grammar and become familiar with the concept and the usage of GCR activities in order to follow a more successful and profitable process of teaching grammar.
They will be able to deal with grammar difficulty for young learners especially for those who have a weak perception of grammar points or have no interest in this language component.
Additionally, according to the second purpose, this study also highly believes that implementing consciousness-raising among young learners is proper and suitable, in the way that the learners find a high degree of great enthusiasm for learning grammar.Moreover, consciousness-raising activities strengthen a sense of cooperation in young learners, and increase the learners' tendency to learn grammar component when they find themselves able to cope with the requirement of such activities.

Table 1 .
Descriptive statistics of the grammar pretest

Table 3 .
Descriptive statistics of the grammar posttest

Table 5 .
Paired samples statistics

Table 6 .
Paired samples t test

Table 7 .
Cronbach's alpha reliability of the questionnaire