Track Changes as a Consciousness Raiser
TAKING BENEFITS FROM USING TRACK CHANGES
AS A GRAMMAR CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISER
Reiza Ayu Puspitasari
English Education, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Surabaya
Email: ayu_reiza@yahoo.com
Ahmad Munir
English Education, Faculty of Languages and Arts, State University of Surabaya
Abstrak
Track Changes telah digunakan dalam pengajaran mata kuliah Advanced English Grammar untuk
mahasiswa semester tiga di Kelas A angkatan 2012 Jurusan Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, Universitas Negeri
Surabaya. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mendaftar kesalahan-kesalahan grammar yang
disadari mahasiswa pada saat Track Changes digunakan, menjelaskan bagaimana Track Changes
meningkatkan kesadaran grammar mahasiswa dan menjelaskan bagaimana mahasiswa menjadi sadar akan
kesalahan-kesalahan grammar pada saat Track Changes digunakan. Penelitian studi kasus ini
menggunakan analisis dokumen, wawancara dan kuesioner sebagai metode pengumpulan data. Tiga puluh
mahasiswa dipilih sebagai subjek penelitian. Meskipun demikian, analisis esai hanya berfokus pada lima
esai mahasiswa. Pertimbangan ini didasarkan pada kemauan mahasiswa untuk berpartisipasi dalam
wawancara. Hasil menunjukkan bahwa: Pertama, kesalahan-kesalahan grammar yang disadari mahasiswa
pada saat Track Changes digunakan tidaklah terbatas, seperti kata kerja akusatif, kata ganti, kata kerja,
bentuk jamak, kata benda, klausa adjektiva, gerund dan kata sifat. Kedua, Track Changes telah berhasil
meningkatkan kesadaran grammar mahasiswa karena jumlah dan jenis-jenis kesalahan-kesalahan grammar
yang ditemukan di esai mahasiswa menurun. Ketiga, mahasiswa menjadi sadar akan kesalahan-kesalahan
grammar pada saat Track Changes digunakan dengan melakukan revisi dan mendapat revisi.
Kata Kunci: Advanced English Grammar, consciousness-raising, Track Changes
Abstract
Track Changes has been incorporated in the teaching of Advanced English Grammar unit for the third
semester students of Class A 2012 batch of English Education study program in State University of
Surabaya. Thus, this study aimed at listing the grammatical errors the students have become conscious
when Track Changes used, explaining how Track Changes have raised students’ grammar consciousness
and explaining how the students become conscious of grammatical errors when Track Changes used.
Document analysis, interview and questionnaire were employed in this case study research. Thirty
students were chosen as the participants. However, the analysis of the essay only focused on five essays.
The consideration was based on the students’ willingness to participate in the interview. The results
showed that: First, the grammatical errors the students have become conscious when Track Changes used
were not limited such as accusative verbs, pronoun, verbs, plural forms, noun, adjective clause, gerund,
and adjective forms. Second, Track Changes have successfully raised students’ grammar consciousness
because the total and variety of grammatical errors found in students’ essays decreased. Third, the students
become conscious of grammatical errors when Track Changes used by doing revision and getting revision.
Keywords: Advanced English Grammar, consciousness-raising, Track Changes
students had already been taught grammar that was
integrated in Intensive Course (IC) unit (Buku Pedoman
Universitas Negeri Surabaya 2012/2013, 2012). It was
found that in one of the four classes of Advanced English
Grammar unit that was Class A, the students of 2012
batch learnt grammar by doing peer editing on writing
products using Track Changes technology besides doing
exercises on Test of English Proficiency (TEP) samples.
INTRODUCTION
In the academic year of 2012/2013, grammar in
English Language program of State University of
Surabaya was taught through two units; Intermediate
English Grammar that should be completed in the second
semester and Advanced English Grammar that was taken
in the third semester. Before taking these two units, the
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Assigning the students to do peer editing in
learning Advanced English Grammar is aimed at
facilitating the detection and correction of grammatical
errors. This activity is associated with an approach to
teaching grammar called consciousness-raising. Ellis
(2003) points out that consciousness-raising emphasizes
the forms more than the meanings, and is directed to make
the students aware of how some linguistic features work.
Nevertheless, though the students focus on the form of the
grammar structure, it does not mean that focus on
meaning is totally abandoned. This is because the students
are also engaged in meaning-focused use of the target
language as they solve the grammar problem (Fotos,
1994).
Additionally, studies on the process of teaching
grammar show that the creation of systems specifically
designed to address students’ need such as clear feedback,
and teacher’s needs such as elimination of repetitive tasks,
increased learner independence, and identification of error
patterns, becomes affordable in this current time due to
the availability of advanced technology coupled with
recent research dealing with learner texts (Hegelheimer &
Fisher, 2006). The available advanced technologies (Kuo
et al., 2002, Cowan, Choi, & Kim, 2003, Hegelheimer &
Fisher, 2006) provide the facilities such as to detect users’
persistent errors and give adequate help, investigate if
persistent errors can be eradicated, and raise learner
awareness of troublesome grammatical features.
The findings prove that technologies in this
recent time have been integrated into teaching English,
particularly in teaching grammar. In Indonesia, the use of
technology has been implemented, particularly in teaching
writing, in which grammar becomes an inseparable part of
it. Munir and Nugroho (2008) conducted a study on the
use of Track Changes to find out if the students could
notice the language errors on their essays, whether they
did not make the same errors on their essay revisions,
what action they took on the parts of essays revised by the
lecturer using Track Changes, whether or not there was
different quality on the language use on draft 1, 2, and so
forth after given feedbacks by the lecturer using Track
Changes. The conclusions were the implementation of
Track Changes was interesting in a way of directing the
students’ attention on the parts of essays that needed to get
revisions. However, this study indicates that the
improvement the students made on their essays,
particularly on the language use, did not come from the
students’ own ability but the lecturer’s correction and
comments on the Track Changes.
The findings from the previous research about
the use of Track Changes play a key role in designing this
research. While the previous research focused on the
lecturer and students’ interactivity with the technology
used in writing unit, this research was conducted to
investigate in a greater depth about the students, peers,
and the lecturer’s interactivity and to find out how Track
Changes was used to raise students’ consciousness on
grammatical errors in a university grammar class. Thus,
this study investigated the process of teaching grammar
on Advanced English Grammar unit taken by the third
semester students of Class A 2012 batch in English
Education program of State University of Surabaya and
the benefits of making use of Track Changes.
RESEARCH METHODS
This study was a qualitative study aimed at
describing social phenomenon of taking benefits from
using Track Changes as a consciousness raiser in a
university grammar class as they occurred naturally since
this took place in the natural setting, without any attempts
to manipulate the situation under study (Dornyei, 2007).
This was also a case study research since the observation
was only done in one of the four grammar classes in
English Education Program of State University of
Surabaya, as indicated by Ary, et al. (2010). Document
analysis, interview and questionnaire were employed in
this study to list the grammatical errors detected by peer
editors, to explain how students’ grammar awareness
improved, and to find out the internal experience of the
students regarding the use of Track Changes in peer
editing activities.
In this study, 30 students from class A Advanced
English Grammar 2012 batch of the third semester
majoring in English Education program became the
participants. They were chosen under the consideration
that whilst taking Advanced English Grammar unit, the
students were introduced to the use of Track Changes in
doing peer editing on writing products while learning
grammar. However, the analysis of the essay only focused
on five essay drafts. The consideration was based on the
students’ willingness to participate in the interview. The
first, second, and third version of five female students’
essay drafts were collected by copying the files from the
lecturer. The essays collected were read, scrutinized, and
searched for the Track Changes which spotted the
grammatical errors found by peer editors. Then, the
grammatical errors the peer editors detected and marked
through Track Changes were classified in three categories.
Those were: could spot the errors and could successfully
correct them, could spot the errors but could not
successfully correct them, and could not spot the errors
and could not correct them. The examples of each
category were given.
Also, interview was constructed in the form of
semi-structured interview asking for the students’ opinion
on the use of Track Changes, what they have learnt from
giving comments and suggestions towards their friends’
essays, and the benefits of Track Changes for spotting
grammatical errors. Additional questions were asked
depend on the students’ response to each question given.
Besides, the questionnaire was constructed in the form of
Likert scales in favorable or positively stated items.
Strongly agree is scored 5, agree is scored 4, undecided
or do not know is scored 3, disagree is scored 2, and
strongly disagree is scored 1. The students were directed
to select the response category that best represents their
reaction to each statement (Ary, et al., 2010). The
questionnaire contained 11 statements of the mechanism,
the ease and the benefits of using Track Changes. In
addition, the 11 Likert-scale items were tested for
reliability coefficients using Cronbach’s alpha.
According to Sax (1989), a reliability coefficient of more
Track Changes as a Consciousness Raiser
than 0.6 is required for a self-designed text or survey.
The all variables scale in this study achieved alpha of
0.69 that was satisfactory.
The same phenomena were also found on student 2 and
student 4’s essay.
The cases for peer editors who could spot the
errors and could successfully correct them or could spot
the errors but could not successfully correct them using
Track Changes prove the finding from Hegelheimer and
Fisher (2006) that the availability of the technology
increases learner independence and identification of error
patterns. This is contradictory with Munir and Nugroho
(2008) who indicated that the improvement the students
made on their essays when Track Changes was used,
particularly on the language use, did not come from the
students’ own ability but the lecturer’s corrections and
comments in Track Changes.
However, the third example shows that the
grammatical error found in student 1’ essay could not be
spotted by the peer editor. An utterance such as “Take
some exercise also a good way to cure acnes” should be
revised to be “Taking some exercise is also a good way to
cure acnes”. The verb take should be changed into gerund
form taking because it becomes the subject of the
sentence. In addition, there is also an omission of verb is
that was not spotted and thus the peer editor could not
correct the errors. The same condition also happens on
student 2, student 3, and student 5’s essay.
The above explanation shows that the
grammatical errors the students have become conscious
when Track Changes used were not limited such as
accusative verbs, pronoun, verbs, plural forms, noun,
adjective clause, gerund, and adjective forms. Thus, it is
proven that the favorable results of the pilot study which
used only one task dealing with one specific grammatical
feature are consistent when the students given a number
of tasks dealing with different grammatical structures as
found by Fotos (1994).
Furthermore, to explain how Track Changes
have raised students’ grammar consciousness, the quality
of the first essay drafts written by the students were
compared to the third essay drafts submitted to the
lecturer after being edited by peer editors and the essay’s
owners. The quality was judged based on the total and
variety of the grammatical errors the students made on
the first and third version. Besides, to investigate how the
students become conscious of grammatical errors when
Track Changes used, interview transcript was searched
for the words and phrases which represented the students’
view on the use of Track Changes. These were then
interpreted for their meanings. Moreover, to find out the
view of the students who were given Track Changes and
those who gave Track Changes, responses to the 11 items
in the questionnaires were coded and imported into SPSS
for descriptive statistics analysis to show the trends of
their opinions of the mechanism, the ease, and the
benefits of using Track Changes.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
To reveal the benefits of using Track Changes as
a grammar consciousness raiser, the results show the
grammatical errors detected by peer editors, explain how
students’ grammar awareness improved, and elaborate
the internal experience of the students regarding the use
of Track Changes in Advanced English Grammar unit.
The grammatical errors the students have become
conscious when Track Changes was used in grammar
lesson
The first example found showed that student 1
made a sentence “Some of them let the acnes gone by
itself” that contain two grammatical errors. First, the
word let belongs to accusative verbs that should be
followed by infinitives. Therefore, the peer editor revised
it to be “Some of them let the acnes go”. Besides, the
peer editor edited the pronoun itself to be themselves to
represent the plural object acnes. These revisions prove
that the peer editor could spot the grammatical errors in
student 1’s essay and could successfully correct them.
This was also done by the other four peer editors who
edited student 2, student 3, student 4, and student 5’
essay.
Nevertheless, it was also found that in spotting
the grammatical error in student 1’s essay such as
“Because exercise can really help relieve stress and
acnes”, the peer editor revised it to be “Because exercise
can really help relieve stress which causing acnes” which
is inappropriate. The object pronoun which of the
adjective clause should be followed by third person
singular causes because the object stress is in a singular
form. Only if which is omitted, the use of the progressive
verb causing is acceptable. This phenomenon shows that
the peer editor could spot the grammatical error in
student 1’s essay but could not successfully correct it.
How Track Changes have raised students’ grammar
consciousness
After getting revision on the second essays, the
grammatical errors in student 1’s essay decreased from
the total of 17 to be 9 errors in the third essay. Errors in
grammatical aspects such as verb tense, accusative verb,
object pronoun, parallelism, diction, noun omission, and
article in student 1’s first essay were not found in her
third essay. This condition also happened on student 2,
student 4, and student 5 that showed significant decrease
on the total and variety of grammatical errors in their first
essays compared to the third version of the essays
written. However, the condition happened in student 3
shows that the same grammatical error was found in the
first and third essay. This was as a result of the inability
of the peer editor in spotting the error on the second essay
which was “It is an intelligence snake” (Student 3’s
essay) which caused the essay owner did the same error
in her third essay.
The significant decrease on the total and variety
of grammatical errors in students’ first essays compared
to the third version of the essays written shows that Track
Changes have successfully raised students’ grammar
consciousness. Thus, the decision to choose Track
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Changes may be made on the consideration that the
technology has the ability to facilitate acquisition or
improvement on grammatical competence as stated by
Stockwell (2007) that choosing technology can be based
on pedagogical objectives that means particular
technology is selected due to specific features it has.
Besides, it confirms Granger et al. (2007) who found that
the combination of technology is beneficial for raising
language awareness.
How the students become conscious of grammatical
errors when Track Changes was used in Advanced
English Grammar unit
The results of the descriptive statistics on the
students’ view related with the mechanism, the ease, and
the benefits of using Track Changes shows that items 1,
2, and 3 have mean scores higher than 4 which mean the
students’ stance exists in between scale 4 representing
agree and 5 representing strongly agree. This means the
students confirm that they understand the mechanism of
operating Track Changes. Regarding the ease, the
students give quite different responses toward item 4 and
item 5. The mean score for item 4 is higher than 4,
indicating the students agree that giving comments or
suggestions toward their friend’s essay is easier when
using Track Changes. This is supported by the student’s
opinion given in the interview such as “Because I think
it’s easy to use and it’s not much time consuming
different with editing on papers” (Student 1).
Additionally, Student 5 expresses her preference to use
Track Changes in a response such as “It makes me easier
to correct my friend’s essay. I prefer using Track
Changes for editing my friend’s essay by typing rather
than writing the comments”. This is in line with Ho and
Savignon (2007) who found that many learners indicated
that they preferred typing instead of writing while
providing feedback.
Furthermore, the mean score of 3.97 which item
5 has, indicates that the students tend to agree that
understanding the feedbacks given by peer editor is easier
when Track Changes used. It was shown in a response
such as “usually, there is a line next to a sentence that is
given Track Changes. And we know that the word is
wrong, so we can find out what’s wrong with that. And
then, we know that there is wrong grammatical
construction” (Student 5). However, understanding the
feedbacks from peer editor is sometimes confusing, as
well. This can be proven from Student 3 saying “I think
that’s correct but they said that it’s false, it’s not like that.
Sometimes, we make negotiation, and share arguments”.
This is contrary to Ho and Savignon (2007) who found
that lack of oral discussion during peer review sessions
when Track Changes used was found to be an obstacle.
Also, when the students felt confuse to accept or
reject the revision made by peer editors, the lecturer gave
comments that the students perceive as beneficial such as
in “Sometimes, my friend corrects sentence that I think is
right. If I found something like that, I usually go to the
lecturer to consult about that” (Student 1) and “My
lecturer usually give feedback and I think it is better
comparing to directly accepting my friend’s feedbacks on
my essay because I think they are not expert in grammar.
Sometimes, it’s hard to know whether my friend’s
correction is right or not, so my lecturer’s feedback
makes it clear for me” (Student 3). This is as suggested
by Fotos and Ellis (1991) who believe that the
proficiency gains would have been higher with a more
detailed explanation of the requirements of the task,
previous experience in pair or group work, and teacher’s
feedback on the solution of the task.
Besides the mechanism and the ease, the
students were also asked about their view on the benefits
of Track Changes. It is found that there are two different
trends of the mean scores; lower than 4 and higher than 4.
Item number 6 has a mean score of 3.97 which mostly
reaches 4 indicating that most students tend to agree that
using Track Changes to show their friends’ errors makes
them aware of grammatical features. This is supported
from the responses given during the interview such as “as
a peer editor, Track Changes help me to show the
grammatical errors in my friend’s essay easily. So, she
can know that there is something wrong” (Student 5) and
“we (become) more sensitive about error in my friend’s
essay” (Student 1).
Moreover, the students agree that the errors
shown in Track Changes help them aware of grammatical
features as stated by Student 2 “(from) the second step,
we know that our grammar is not perfect, we still found
many grammatical errors but I ask to my friend and
lecturer and sometimes I open Betty Azar book and my
grammar gets better”. This upholds the findings from Yip
(1994) who found that a C-R session class can be
effective for directing students’ attention to the
ungrammatical constructions, and Munir and Nugroho
(2008) who believe that the implementation of Track
Changes is interesting in a way of directing students’
attention on the parts of essays that need to get revision.
By using Track Changes, the language errors on students’
essays could be directly showed to them.
In addition, the students tend to agree (M=3.97,
SD= .823) that when Track Changes used, they could
detect their friends’ errors and could easily correct them.
However, item number 9 has a mean score of 3.14 that
means the students’ stance exists in between scale 3
representing undecided or do not know and 4
representing agree. In another word, the students tend to
have no idea whether they could detect their friend’s
errors but hardly correct them or not when Track
Changes used. This means, the students were not so sure
if correcting errors in their friend’s essay was hardly
done.
Moreover, item number 10 shows the students
agree that the use of Track Changes helps essay editing
activities more efficient. Besides, the mean score of 3.93
which item number 11 has, indicates that the students
tend to agree that Track Changes makes grammar
learning more engaging as stated by Student 3 “I want to
say that grammar is one of my favorite lectures. So,
everything new about grammar, I am very interested
about it. One of this is Track Changes. So I think Track
Changes is something that motivates me in learning
grammar”.
Track Changes as a Consciousness Raiser
Furthermore, students’ responses on the semistructured interview also reveal essential information
about the benefits of Track Changes that leads to the
explanation of how the students become conscious of
grammatical features when Track Changes used in
Advanced English Grammar unit. Those were expressed
in comments such as “I become more… very aware about
the grammar form, function, and meaning. So, for all this
time I just consider the form and the meaning, not the
function. I become more aware about the function”
(Student 1) and in “I learn so much from Track Changes,
such as grammar that my friends know but I don’t know,
and then the comments from lecturer also help me.
Before this, I don’t know, after I use Track Changes and
my lecturer gives comments, I become understand
fragment, the use of active and passive voice that
sometimes confusing” (Student 4). These are in line with
Ellis (2003) who stated that C-R is directed to make the
students aware of how some linguistic features work and
Scott and Fuente (2008) who concluded that the outcome
of C-R tasks is awareness and discovery of how a
specific structure works.
However, opinions such as “sometimes, when
my lecturer give us that kind of exercise using Track
Changes, it’s quite boring” (Student 3) and “But
sometimes I feel bored because Track Changes was used
in most of our grammar class” (Student 4) indicate the
students found that using Track Changes is sometimes
boring. Additionally, Student 4 saying “There are many
rules and steps taken for editing the essay. That’s make
me bored” explained why the student feels bored
sometimes when using Track Changes for peer editing
activities. Despite expressing the boredom, the student
still emphasizes the use of Track Changes as helpful, as
stated by Student 3 “But I think it’s still very useful for
us”.
first essays. Thus, the reason of making use of Track
Changes might be pedagogical objective that is
facilitating improvement on grammatical competence.
Third, the students become conscious of
grammatical errors when Track Changes was used in
Advanced English Grammar unit as results of doing
revision and getting revision. After doing revision, peer
editors made negotiation with their friends about the
grammatical errors spotted in Track Changes. When there
was confusion to accept or reject the revision, they read
grammar book and they were also given feedbacks from
the lecturer. This makes the students aware of
grammatical features that they did not know before. In
addition, the students become conscious of grammatical
errors because Track Changes directs their attention on
parts of the essays that contained errors.
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CONCLUSIONS
The results and discussions presented previously
become the sources of drawing the conclusions of this
study. First, the grammatical errors the students have
become conscious when Track Changes used in grammar
lesson were not limited to particular grammatical
structure since in peer editing activities the students did
not focus on one C-R task dealing with one specific
grammatical feature. There were three categories of peer
editors’ responses in Track Changes concerning the
grammatical errors spotted, those were could spot the
errors and could successfully correct them; could spot the
errors but could not successfully correct them; and could
not spot the errors and could not correct them. This
indicates that Track Changes increases students’
independence because the corrections and comments in
Track Changes came from the students (peer editors), not
the lecturer.
Second, Track Changes has successfully raised
students’ grammar consciousness. After getting the
revision on the second essays from peer editors using
Track Changes, the total and variety of grammatical
errors in students’ final essays decreased compared to the
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Munir, A., & Nugroho, H. m. A. (2008). A Model of
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Consciousness-Raising, Form-Focused Tasks.
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Stockwell, G. (2007). A review of technology choice for
teaching language skills and areas in the CALL
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Yip, V. (1994). Grammatical consciousness-raising and
learnability. In T. Odlin (Ed.), Perspective on
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grammar
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