Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 136 ( 2014 ) 109 – 113
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
1877-0428 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LINELT 2013.
doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.298
ScienceDirect
LINELT 2013
An Evaluation of Grammar and Vocabulary Consciousness-Raising
Activities in Current ELT Materials
Hassan Soodmand Afshar
a
*, Mohammad Bagherieh
b
a
Assistant Professor in TEFL, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, IR Iran
b
MA in TEFL, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, IR Iran
Abstract
Five current international ELT books used in Iran were scrutinized regarding inclusion of grammar and vocabulary
consciousness-raising activities. To this end, a twenty-seven item, five-point Likert-scale questionnaire filled out by
90 Iranian EFL teachers and 170 students, triangulated by a semi-structured interview conducted with 20 EFL
teachers and 20 students were adopted. A Chi-square analysis and an independent sample t-test were run to compare
teachers and students' responses. The findings revealed although the five ELT books used different kinds of
grammar and vocabulary activities, they did not include some of the major grammar and vocabulary consciousness-
raising activities (e.g. making generalizations, cross-referencing, reconstructing, etc). The findings might be
beneficial for ELT material developers, syllabus designers and practitioners.
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LINELT 2013.
Keywords: Grammar and vocabulary consciousness-raising activities, current international ELT books, materials;
1. Introduction
It is generally believed that the mastery of grammar and vocabulary as building blocks of the English language might
ease the burden of the leaning process for the students.
Regarding the crucial role of vocabulary, (Decarrico, 2001, p.285) maintains that "vocabulary learning is central to
* Corresponding Author. Tel.: +98-811-829-2590; fax: +98-811-829-2590.
E-mail address: soodmand@basu.ac.ir, hassansoodmand@gmail.com
© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of LINELT 2013.
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language acquisition, whether the language is first, second, or foreign". Krashen (1982) believes that grammar is
synonymous with conscious learning and it has two possible roles in second language teaching including grammar as
"monitor" and grammar as "language appreciation". Prabhu (1987) stresses the importance of meaning-focused tasks
and their contribution to L2 grammar acquisition. Both teachers and foreign language teaching/learning materials can
put consciousness-raising activities into effect. However, of paramount importance here is the role of materials in
general and course books in particular which provide a blueprint of activities to be done by both teachers and students.
As Cunnings worth (1995, p.1) maintains, "The wealth of published materials for English language teaching (ELT)
available on the market makes selecting the right course book a challenging task". This statement clearly demonstrates
the necessity of course book evaluation in any ELT program. Tomlinson (2003, p.15) defines course book evaluation as
" a procedure that involves measuring the value (or potential value) of a set of learning materials". The present study
aimed at evaluating current ELT materials taught in Iran with regard to grammar and vocabulary consciousness
activities. Consciousness rising, (C-R) according to Richards and Schmidt (2002, p. 109) is a "technique that
encourages learners to pay attention to language form in the belief that an awareness of form will contribute indirectly
to language acquisition".
Willis and Willis (1996, p.71) suggest different grammar consciousness raising activities including:
Identify/consolidate: Students are asked to search a set of data to identify a particular pattern or usage and the
language forms associated with it.
Classify (semantic; structural): Students are required to work with a set of data and sort it according to
similarities and differences based on formal or semantic criteria.
Hypothesis building/checking: Students are given (or asked to make) a generalization about language and
asked to check this against more language data.
Cross-language exploration: Students are encouraged to find similarities and differences between patternings
in their own language and patterning’s in English.
Reconstruction/deconstruction: Students are required to manipulate language in ways, which reveal
underlying patterns.
Recall: Students are required to recall and reconstruct elements of a text. The purpose of the recall is to
highlight significant features of the text.
Reference training: Students need to learn to use reference works - dictionaries, grammars and study guides.
Moreover, vocabulary consciousness according to Scott and Scott (2010, p.1), "is an interest in and awareness of
words as building blocks of communication, the ability to reflect on, and manipulate words as units of language".
Graves & Watts (2002) maintain that word consciousness refers to an awareness of, and interest in words and their
meanings. Within the same line of reasoning, Anderson and Nagy (1992) believe that word consciousness integrates
metacognition about words, motivation to learn words, and deep and lasting interest in words. There are different
approaches and activities to enhance word consciousness. Graves (2007) maintains that enhancing the metalinguistic
awareness of students; the ability to consciously think about and reflect on linguistic characteristics, such as the
characteristics of words will make learners more conscious of words. According to Graves (2007), activities like
modelling skilful word choice, promoting skilful word choice, encouraging word play and word lay books, offering
instruction that is rich and robust, having students take part in novel explanation of words and providing instruction on
words can be implemented by the teachers to help the students to become conscious of words. Graves & Taffe (2007,
p.159) suggest five approaches to foster word consciousness including:
•
Modeling, recognizing and encouraging adept diction: This approach includes using unfamiliar words to
describe the concepts they are familiar with to make them curious about the world of words. For instance,
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asking the students to close the door because it is ajar instead of asking the student to close the door because it
not completely closed. One approach to model adept diction is to use the "word-of-the-day" approach. Another
approach in students' writing and speaking is to scaffold their use of new words.
•
Promoting word play: This approach includes reinforcing the use of homophones, homographs, idioms,
clichés, puns and word play books.
•
Providing intensive and expressive instruction: This approach requires students to be immersed in a rich,
precise, interesting and intensive use of vocabulary (i.e. using children's literature). It also requires students to
work extensively and intensively with words. The third step in this approach, is writing extensive essays using
much of the words they have learned. Finally, the last step involves discussions about the word choices they
make, why they make those choices, and how adroit use of words makes speech and writing more precise,
more memorable and more interesting.
•
Involving students in original investigations: This approach involves students in systematic efforts (research
done by the students themselves) to investigate different data sources including both written and spoken ones.
•
Teaching students about words: This final step involves the knowledge of words, which teachers should have,
and the possibility of explicitly instructing students in this knowledge. Nagy and Scott (2000) believe that
word knowledge comprises knowledge of five aspects including incrementality, multidimensionality,
ploysemy, interrelatedness and heterogeneity.
2. Methodology
2.1. Participants
The participants of the present study were 90 male and female Iranian EFL teachers with different university
degrees (at least a BA) in TEFL and translation and also with different teaching experiences (at least 2 years of
experience). The participants also included 170 male and female EFL learners studying one of the five current
international ELT books in different private ELT centres of Hamedan. The proficiency level of students included
intermediate, high-intermediate and advanced levels based on the book they were studying. Both teachers and
students were conveniently sampled from the available private ELT centres of Hamedan.
2.2. Materials
The materials for the present study included five current international ELT books widely used in private ELT
centres in Iran. The researchers evaluated the following ELT course books based on the criteria features regarding
grammar and vocabulary consciousness raising activities based on Willis and Willis (1996) and Graves and Taffe
(2007) respectively. The particulars of the ELT books evaluated in the study are:
Clare, A., Wilson, JJ. (2006). Total English, NY: Pearson Education.
Hancock, M., McDonald, A. (2008). English Result, Oxford: OUP.
Oxenden, C., Latham-Coeing, C. & Seligson, P. (2009). American English File. Oxford: OUP.
Richards, J.C., Hull, J. & Proctor, S. (2006). Interchange (3rd edition). Cambridge: CUP.
Richards, J.C., and Bohlke, D. (2012). Four Corners, Cambridge: CUP.
2.2. Instruments
The instrument adopted for collecting the required data was a 30 item five-digit Likert-scale questionnaire which
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was filled out by both EFL teachers and EFL learners. Second, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to the
EFL teachers. Finally, for the purpose of data triangulation, a semi-structured interview was conducted on both ELT
teachers and EFL learners.
2.3. Procedure
To evaluate the aforementioned ELT materials first, the researchers subjectively scrutinized each book against 30
criteria features. The criteria features to evaluate the incorporation of grammar raising activities were drawn up from the
model suggested by Willis and Willis (1996). In addition, Graves and Taffe's (2007) model regarding word
consciousness activities was considered as the criteria for the incorporation of vocabulary consciousness raising
activities into the course books. Second, to include the teachers ‘and learners’ voices in this subjective evaluation, both
EFL teachers and learners filled out a questionnaire. The items of the mentioned questionnaire were obtained from the
responses which 20 other similar EFL teachers gave to an open-ended questionnaire and also the criteria suggested by
Willis and Willis (1996) and Graves and Taffe (2007). Finally, to triangulate the obtained data, a semi-structured
interview was conducted with 20 ELT teachers and 20 EFL learners each one teaching or studying at least one of the
five ELT books mentioned earlier. The interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and coded by the researchers to find
the recurring themes and patterns mentioned by the interviewees who were then quantitated and frequency analysed.
2.4. Data analysis
The results obtained from the teachers' questionnaires and those obtained from the students' questionnaires were
compared using chi-square analysis to find any significant differences between teachers and students' responses to each
individual item. An independent sample t-test was also run to compare the teachers and students' overall responses to
find any significant general differences among the perceptions of both groups. Furthermore, the semi-structured
interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and coded by the researchers, which were then quantitated, and frequency
analysed. Finally, the results of the researchers' subjective evaluation, the teachers' responses to the questionnaire, and
students' responses to the questionnaires as well as the results gained from the semi-structured interview were
compared, contrasted and discussed.
2.3. Results and discussion
The subjective evaluation of the researchers revealed that although the current books enjoyed incorporation of
different vocabulary and grammar consciousness raising activities, they lacked some of them. The results of the scrutiny
showed that activities like making generalizations, cross referencing, reconstructing, discussing word choices,
researching about vocabularies were lacking in the books. The reason might be due to the nature of the language
teaching theories behind the books. Four Corners, which is a recently published series, seems to have incorporated
more activities of the ilk. However, vocabulary has not received due attention in Four Corners. Interchange series,
which was the previous version of the Four Corners showed no significant difference in presenting grammar and
vocabulary. Thus, it might be concluded that four corners did not improve much regarding vocabulary and grammar.
The scrutiny also revealed that English Result, which is also a recent material in ELT, enjoys different vocabulary and
grammar teaching strategies. It was also concluded while American English File was rich in presenting grammar; it did
not well emphasize teaching vocabulary. Total English was concluded to be weak in presenting both grammar and
vocabulary. The results of the chi-square analyses indicated that although teachers answered some of the items in the
same manner and students, teachers and students' opinions differed in some items. The items included making students
to work with a sort of data and sorting it according to similarities and differences based on formal and semantic criteria,
emphasizing the use of different grammar learning techniques and strategies and using an explicit approach in teaching
grammar and vocabulary. The reason might be the fact that students' perception of different activities and methods in
teaching grammar and vocabulary might be different from that of the teachers', In other words, students may not be
aware of the concepts of the activities included in the questionnaire. Furthermore, the results of the independent sample
t-test showed that, students and teachers' opinions did not differ significantly. Table 1 shows the results of the t-test.
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Hassan Soodmand Afshar and Mohammad Bagherieh / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 136 ( 2014 ) 109 – 113
Table 1. Independent sample t- test for teachers' and students' opinions
T df Sig.(2tailed) Mean Difference Std.Error difference 95% Confidence Interval
Lower Upper Lower Upper Lower Upper Lower
-0.8 258
0.00 -0.22 0.78 -.2.323 3.542
Finally, the results of the semi-structured interviews also corroborated the teachers and students' opinions. It can be
concluded that both teachers and students are not aware of the potential value of the grammar and vocabulary
consciousness raising activities included in the books. Material developers are also recommended to put a wider
range of the activities in the current ELT books to enhance and ease the burden of learning English as a foreign
language.
References
Anderson, R. C., & Nagy, W. E. (1992). The Vocabulary Conundrum. American Educator: The Professional
Journal of the American Federation of Teachers, 16(4), 14-18.
Cunningsworth, A. (1995).Choosing your Coursebook . London: Heinemann.
Decarrico, .J.S. (2001). Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (pp. 285-299). Heinle & Heinle
Publishers.
Graves, M. (2007). Conceptual and empirical bases for providing struggling readers with multifaceted and long-term
vocabulary instruction. In B. Taylor & J. Ysseldyke (Eds.),
Effective instruction for struggling readers, K-6
(pp. 55-83). NY: Teachers College.
Graves, M. F., & Watts-Taffe, S. M. (2002). The place of word consciousness in a research-based vocabulary
program. What Research Has to Say about Reading Instruction, 3, 140-165.
Nagy, W. E. & Scott, J. A. (2000). Vocabulary processes. In M. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson & Barr, R.
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Pearson Education Limited.
Tomlinson, B. (2003). Developing Materials for Language Teaching. Continuum.
Willis, D., & Willis, J. (1996). Consciousness-raising Activities. Challenge and Change in Language Teaching.
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