Farida Abderrahim, University of Constantine, Algeria
Consolidating the Learners’ Foundations in English through Language Awareness
This study takes place in the context of English as a Foreign Language at University level
where the teaching of English is subdivided into the major components of a language: writing,
speaking, grammar, literature and cultural studies. This division obeys an underlying objective: the
development of all the language aspects necessary to master a language in order to use it for
communication purposes or as a medium of instruction. Our focus is the teaching of grammar in the
second year where the major objective is the consolidation of the foundations acquired in the First
Year and the development of language awareness which enables the final acquisition of the
elements of language.
We will report on the results of an analysis of a number of textbooks following the Structural
Approach, the Communicative Approach and a combination of the two. Our analysis considers the
correlation between the nature of the sequence reflecting the approach and the nature of the
activities, and aims at identifying the most appropriate activities for our learners.
We will present a model teaching unit made up of grammar consciousness-raising activities
involving the learners in the identification and understanding of the grammatical point in context.
These activities draw the learners’ attention to specific structures, which facilitates input and helps
the learners discover the rules by themselves. The learners are required to solve the activities
interactively in order to formulate both the implicit knowledge (the knowledge that is intuitive and
procedural) and the explicit knowledge (the knowledge we learn).
Keywords: Grammar Consciousness-raising activities, language awareness