USING CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING TASKS TO HELP BASIC SCHOOL PUPILS TAKE CONTROL OF THEIR LEARNING OF SUBJECT-VERB-AGREEMENT (SVA)

Abstract

This research work was aimed at investigating the effect of consciousness-raising (CR) tasks on basic school pupils’ understanding and use of SVA. The study was conducted at a Basic School in the Assin North Municipality in the Central Region of Ghana to find out whether CR which has been used in a science lesson will produce positive impact in English Language lessons. All the 30 Junior High School pupils were purposively sampled to participate in the study. Since the problem was a classroom issue that required immediate attention, action research design was used. Data collection occurred at three stages; pre-intervention stage, intervention stage and post-intervention stage. A pre-intervention test was designed to test the pupils’ understanding of SVA. Intervention activities were carried out after the pre-intervention test using the consciousness-raising tasks. A post-test was conducted after the intervention to find out the impact of the intervention on pupils’ performance in SVA. The findings of the study showed that varied SVA rules and types, rules not well explained and teachers’ unsuitable teaching methods and confusion towards SVA teaching are some of the causes of pupils’ difficulty in mastering SVA concept among the basic school pupils used for the study. The data collected showed that CR tasks are effective in promoting learner’s accurate use of Subject-Verb-Agreement (SVA) in a relaxed condition. Article visualizations: