Using grammar consciousness-raising tasks to enhance students’ narrative tenses competence

Abstract

Enhancing learners’ grammar competence basically improves their communication skills. Nevertheless, the question of which grammar teaching technique is highly useful for the purpose is arguable. In light of that, this study was set out to examine the effects of using grammar consciousness-raising tasks in enhancing students’ narrative tenses competence vis-à-vis the conventional method in which grammar is taught mainly through teacher explanations and sentence level practices followed by corrective feedback. To this end, the study included a total of 90 grade eleven students in the experimental and the comparison groups. In the intervention which lasted for five weeks, the experimental group participants were taught narrative tenses via consciousness-raising tasks, and the comparison group ones were taught the same grammar features via the conventional method. Tests and semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data. The findings revealed that grammar consciousness-raising tasks were more effective than the conventionally used grammar teaching method in improving students’ ability to understand and use the target grammar features. Moreover, data from the interviews showed that participants in the experimental group had positive perceptions about grammar consciousness-raising tasks. Based on the findings, it was recommended that grammar consciousness-raising tasks should be used in the teaching of grammar.