Improving the Grammatical Competence of Students Through Consciousness-

Raising Approach to Teaching Grammar: An Action Research

Phyll Jhann E. Gildore

PhDAL Student

Abstract

This action research is aimed at improving the grammatical competence of the

English Language Teaching students through Consciousness-Raising Approach to
teaching grammar. A quasi-experimental design specifically the one-group pretest-
posttest design was used in the study. Forty-five freshmen BSED English major
students of the College of Teacher Education of the University of Mindanao were the
participants and the recipients of the intervention. Using purposive sampling technique,
the students were chosen as they are the group needing the intervention based on the
baseline data. The data were gathered using an institutional-made English proficiency
test during pretest and posttest using percentage scores and test of significant
difference. The results and findings were presented using graphical, tabular, and textual
data gathered using percentage scores, t-test measures, and interviews of the students.
The results show that there is an increase of percentage scores between the pretest
and posttest, and there is indeed a significant difference between these scores. Hence,
the Consciousness-Raising Approach to teaching grammar have significantly affected
the grammatical competence of the students in terms of pronoun-antecedent
agreement, subject-verb agreement, and tenses and aspects of the verbs. It is
recommended that Consciousness-Raising Approach to teaching grammar to English
Language Teaching students be used during their freshmen year to better equip them
as future English language teachers.

Keywords: consciousness-raising approach, grammatical competence, teaching

grammar
Context and Rationale
English has been the Philippine Educational System’s medium of instruction
since the 20th century. The language has been incorporated on many levels in our
society especially in the institutions of education, media, and the government. After a
century though, proficiency in the language is still a difficulty and an anxiety, especially
to students who are not exposed enough to the language. This situation poses an
opportunity for ESL teachers to up their efficacy and their understanding of language.
This also has heavy implications to Teacher Education Institutions that are offering
English Language Teaching programs. The future ESL teachers should have a master
grasp of the language for them to be able to teach it in many different ways as
demanded by the needs of the students.
Unfortunately, in the most recent institutional conduct of English Bridging
Diagnostic Test for freshmen teacher education students in the University, it was found
that students have a significant lack of grammatical competence in the English
language. What is more surprising is that students who major in English language
teaching also got significantly low scores. It is expected that this cohort of students have
already gained a certain level of grammatical competence in the English language
enough that they graduate in Senior High School. More specifically, it is imperative that
they possess a certain grasp of the English language as they have enrolled themselves
in an English language teaching program.
This action research is proposed to address the posed issue of the freshmen
students who major in ELT. In theory, the study intends to strengthen the grammatical
competence or acquired linguistic knowledge of students through consciousness-raising
approach to teaching grammar. This will better equip them as they proceed in their high
years and as they eventually teach the language as practice teachers. This is based on
the premise that competence contribute greatly to students’ efficacy in language
production (Krashen, 1982; Ellis, 2005; Schwieter, 2013). In the process of focusing on
the competence of the students, the explicit and implicit knowledge of the English
language is taken into greater consideration rather than practice and memorization of
structures and formulaic expressions when producing written or spoken language.
At this level of education, and on the path that the students have undertaken to
be future English teachers, it is more than important that they be subject to intervention.
At this stage, these students are expected to be able to simulate the teaching of English
language in most of their courses. However, they cannot effectively do so as there is a
need to bridge the gap between their current competence and the competence
demanded of them as students of the ELT program. Specifically, the study is significant
in that enhancing explicit and implicit knowledge or competence is one step at making
sure that the students be well-equipped for the higher years and eventually in the field
of teaching English. This will feasibly address the fossilized ungrammatical linguistic
expressions, correct mistakes and errors in verb tenses and aspects, and facilitate the
betterment of students’ performance with the language.

It is the responsibility of the school to prepare the students in their education

whether this be within or beyond the four corners of the classroom. Much so, it is the
responsibility of the teacher to make sure that this goal is put into action. The current
study will potentially contribute to the preparedness of the subjected students in their
program and in their future profession. Generally, the study will potentially contribute to
institutionalizing an English bridging program to facilitate a support structure for teacher
education freshmen students who major in English language teaching who still lack the
English language competence at the onset of the college program.

Research Questions

This action research seeks to implement Consciousness-Raising Approach to

Teaching Grammar based on the need. Hence, it seeks to answer the following
research questions:
1. Is there a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores of the
students after the implementation of the Consciousness-Raising Approach to
teaching grammar?
2. How does the approach improve the grammatical competence of the students?
 Methods
Participants, Other Sources of Data and Information

This action research utilized a quasi-experimental design specifically the one-

group pretest-posttest design. The design is used when the research is intended to
measure the same dependent variable in one group of participants before and after a
treatment is conducted (Creswell, 2014). In this case, the variable of the study is the
students’ grammatical competence in the tenses and aspects of verbs, pronoun-
antecedent agreement, and subject-verb agreement. The variable was measured using
a pretest before any treatment is implemented. The treatment of the study is the
Consciousness-Raising Approach to teaching grammar which will be used in the
intervention program where the students are to participate. A posttest was then
administered as the measure of the variable after the treatment is implemented. The
design suits the context of the study as there is only one group of students under the
intervention.
The participants of the study were forty-five (45) freshmen students of the
English secondary education program of the College of Teacher Education. The lack of
grammatical competence specifically on tenses and aspects of verbs, pronoun-
antecedent agreement, and subject-verb agreement was observed in this same group
of students based from the result of the pretest. The students’ age ranges from 18 to 20
and most of them are products of the EBEC; only three of them are college returnees
under the new curriculum. They are enrolled in the 2 nd semester and is to proceed to 2 nd
year of the program come June 2020. In their second-year coursework, these group of
students are expected to simulate the teaching and assessment of grammar in their
courses. The need of the intervention also stems from this said fact.

Data Gathering Methods

An institutional English Proficiency Test was used as instrument to gauge the

grammatical competence of the students in terms of pronoun-antecedent agreement,
subject-verb agreement, and verb-tenses and aspects. The said test was used as
pretest and posttest for the action research. The pretest was administered in the first
week of January, and the posttest was administered in the second week of February.
The raw scores serve as data for the analysis of significant difference. Interviews were
conducted a day after the conduct of the posttest which was recorded and immediately
transcribed.

Data Analysis Plan

The data in the form of test scores were collected by a Grademaster checking
machine. Item analysis and other relevant analytics were done through the grading
machine. Paired T-test, as a statistical tool, will be used to measure if there exists a
significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores of the students. More so,
thematic content analysis will be used as analytical process for the interview data.
Through readings of relevant literature, the conjectures as to how the treatment may
improve the students’ performance are established and discussed.

Innovation, Intervention, and Strategy

The pursuit of the current action research is to increase the grammatical

competence of freshmen BSED-English major students. As mentioned in the context
and rationale of the study, the competence of students greatly contributes to their
overall language performance. The focus, however, of this action research is on
competence, or what Ellis (2001) terms as the implicit knowledge and explicit
knowledge of the language. Founded on the notion that ESL teachers must master the
language in terms of competence and performance, the study targets the freshmen
BSED-English students. Since the pretest confirms the significant lack of grammatical
competence of the respondents, a necessary plan was established to serve as
intervention in hopes to indeed alleviate the lack and improve the English proficiency of
the students.

The said intervention program is sectioned into three main stages: pre-
implementation, implementation, and post-implementation stages. Each stage contains
in them procedures that the study followed. The subsequent discussions explain in
detail the stages and their realizations: The pre-implementation stage involved the
crafting of the intervention plan and the administration of the pretest. Since the
freshmen BSED-English students are immediately identifiable, they were gathered in
the College Enhancement Room for the pretest. The pretest was analyzed and has
served as basis of the conduct of the intervention program. The implementation stage
involved the conduct proper of the intervention. The scheduled intervention ran for a
total of twenty-four hours in the span of three Saturdays dated January 25, February 1,
and February 8, 2020. The teacher used Consciousness-Raising Approach to teaching
grammar, and lessons were focused on consciousness-raising tasks rather than on
practice and drills. The approach is best in suited in language classes that focus on
understanding the make-up of language, rather than mastering the forms and structure.
The post-implementation stage included the collection of the posttest scores and the
eventual analysis of the relevant data that stem from the scores.

The Consciousness-Raising Approach to teaching grammar is not a formal

teaching of grammar. It is not, more so, a traditional teaching of grammar wherein
students use drills and practice sets in their language subjects. Contrarily,
Consciousness-Raising Approach opposes to such approach to teaching of language.
The very premise of the approach lies on the fact that Consciousness-Raising Tasks,
not practice sets and drills nor immediate performance tasks, facilitate language
learning and acquisition. Whereas practice is primarily behavioral, consciousness-
raising is essentially concept-forming in orientation. Hence, it is grounded of the premise
that learning the grammar of a language through consciousness-raising approach is
considered necessary to acquire the capability of producing grammatically acceptable
utterances in the language (Corder, 1988). The approach attempts to equip learners
with an understanding of specific grammatical feature, to develop declarative
(describing a rule of grammar and applying it in production) rather than procedural
(applying a rule of grammar in practice and drills) knowledge of it (Ellis, 2002; Richard &
Schmidt, 2002,). Additionally, Richards, Platt, and Platt (1992) define consciousness-
raising as follows: It is an approach to the teaching of grammar in which instruction in
grammar (through grammar explanation and other form-focused activities and tasks) is
viewed as a way of raising learner’s awareness of grammatical features of the
language. These group of students have specialized their study of English as a
language to be taught. The supposed aim is not just to be able to communicate with the
language, but also to be able to understand it enough that they can effectively teach it.
The language, hence, is the content to be taught in itself in this context. Therefore, a
concept-forming approach such as CRA is a sensible approach as a treatment.

The justification for the selection of any approach to teaching and learning is
almost always based on the context where it is implemented. In the case of the study,
the students are future English language teachers. It is expected of language teachers
to understand and explain the language processes and the cognitive process behind its
production enough that they are able to diagnose errors and mistakes committed by
students and correct them using strategies and techniques that are based on sound
linguistic principles. Hence, this deals with the content knowledge of these students on
the English language which they are going to teach in the future. As Soliday (2012)
states, the increase in teacher content knowledge aside from teacher pedagogy is
believed to directly impact students’ achievement. Hence, it is more than necessary for
these group of students to be taught the English language competence with a concept-
forming orientation at the onset of the program. This contributes to their explicit
knowledge of the language and eventually their implicit knowledge which, as
aforementioned, greatly affect their language production. The more they become
‘conscious’ of grammatical features and understand how they work and how they are
used, the better their grasp of the language and the better their content knowledge will
be. Consequentially, they become equipped for their 2 nd year courses in the short term,
and in their practice teaching in the long run.

Results and Discussion

The main aim of the study is to improve the grammatical competence of the
students by using Consciousness-Raising Approach to teaching grammar which, in the
context of the research, is the basics of Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement, Subject-Verb
Agreement, and Verb Tenses and Aspects. Presented below are the results of the
pretest and posttest and findings after the conduct of the intervention.

Presented in figure 1 is the data comparison of the pretest and posttest

percentage scores of the students before and after the conduct of the intervention.
Based on the data, there is an increase of percentage scores in all three areas. The
topic area with the greatest increase is the Verb Tenses and Aspects which is followed
by Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement and Subject-Verb Agreement respectively.
 Figure 1. Comparison of pretest and posttest percentage scores
100.00% 90.93%
89.54%
90.00% 82.18%
80.00%
70.00% 61.10% 63.60%
60.00%
50.00%
40.00% 35.60%
30.00%
20.00%
10.00%
0.00%
Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Subject-Verb Agreement Verb Tenses and Aspects

Pretest Posttest
The previous figure presents only the percentage scores of the students as a
visualization of the percentage score increase. In table 2, moreover, the test of
significant difference is presented. The result of the paired t-test is as shown below:

Table 1. Test of significant difference between pretest and posttest scores

Std. Std. Error
Mean t df Sig. (2-tailed)
Deviation Mean
pretest -
Pair 1 -11.28889 4.22988 .63055 -17.903 44 .000
posttest

The paired-sample t-test yielded a p-value of .000 which is interpreted as the two
scores having significant difference. This result suggest that the conducted intervention
does have an effect in the posttest performance of the students in the tests. The result
specifically tells us that Consciousness-Raising Approach to teaching grammar
improves the grammatical competence of the students in terms of the topic areas that
they were tested. The five CR activities have indeed allowed improvement of the
students explicit and implicit knowledge of the English language.

The interview, on the other hand, focused on the perception of students on how
the approach helped them improve their competence. The students were not very
surprised after the results of the posttest were given. During the conduct of the study,
students’ participation as formative assessment suggests that they have indeed gained
competence, their inquiries about the topic contributed a lot to their learning. One
student shared that because the teacher clearly answered their questions about the
rules of the tenses and aspects and its use in context, they were able to understand
when to use perfect aspects of the verbs. In fact, most of the students agree that they
have now clearly understood the grammatical features and their uses.
 The students responded positively when they were asked if the approach is
helpful in their being future English teachers. One student had a striking answer by
saying that the approach would help them in their future courses especially in ELT 224-
Teaching and Assessment of Grammar. They said that it is better that they know and
are aware of the grammatical features of the language that they teach. As they design
lesson plans that use other approaches to teach English, the basic competence of the
language would expand their use of strategies because they have knowledge as to how
the grammatical features work in use. He said that just knowing the rules is not enough,
knowing how the whys and hows of the rules would better equip them as they design
lessons for their classes.

The result of the study is supported by other studies conducted in the same
manner. Mohamed (2004) concluded in his study that consciousness-raising activities
are effective learning tools and can be used to raise learners’ awareness of linguistic
forms. Sugiharto (2006) stated that consciousness-raising activities are effective in
helping students develop their explicit knowledge of grammatical patterns. Such
knowledge of the language is advantageous to students of English Language Teaching
program. The findings in the study of Khatibi (2014) provide empirical support for the
facilitative effect of consciousness-raising tasks on listening comprehension
performance of the participants. The findings of this study are also similar to that of
Hosseininik and Sangani (2014) which found a significant improvement in the
experimental group’s written performance with regard to recognition, proper use and
production of the two chosen language items. The findings indicate that consciousness-
raising activities do have a positive effect on the participants’ written performance.

A better understanding of grammatical features and improvement of the explicit

and implicit knowledge of grammar may not necessarily translate into better linguistic
performance or production. However, such competence is necessary especially in the
context of the study. As future teachers of the English language, the respondents all
have to have a comprehensive grasp not only of the communicative fluency, but also
the grammatical accuracy. Unlike other disciplines, the English language is the content
as well as our medium of instruction in English courses. Hence, to teach English is to
internally master it, as well as efficiently produce it.

Recommendation

Based on the findings of this action research, it is recommended that: Firstly,

students in language teaching programs, may they be English or Filipino, be taught not
only to produce language in communication, but also competence in the language that
they are to teach using Consciousness-Raising Approach. This would make student
understand the language that they are going to teach in the future.

Secondly, teachers of Teacher Education Institutions may conduct the same or a

much-improved intervention program as bridging program for their freshmen language
teaching students. This would presumably equip the students for their higher-level
courses in their programs, and eventually in their practice teaching.
 Lastly, it is highly recommended that while functional and communicative
perspective of the language is the ultimate goal of language teaching, as teachers
should also take into account that students under language teaching program must gain
mastery in their language and Consciousness-Raising Approach to teaching language
is, based on the finding, effective in doing such.

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