THE EFFECTS OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING TASKS ON THE COMPREHENSION OF “IF CLAUSES” BY THE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

Abstract

The aim of this study is to discuss the semantic properties of ‘if clauses in English, to discover whether the learners of English are cognizant of  these properties and to find out if consciousness-raising activities can facilitate the comprehension of the target grammatical item. Language learning involves the mastery of language items such as phonological, morphological, lexical and syntactic; the development of language skills in the target language; the use of language items to fulfil language functions and building up communicative strategies. The mastery of language items plays a vital role both in the development of language skills and in carrying out language functions. Some language items can cause more difficulty for learners of English in comparison with the other language items. One of the grammatical items that are difficult to learn is ‘If clauses’ as foreign or second language learners have difficulty with the comprehension of the basic semantic    properties of the item in question. The aim is to reveal what sort of problems learners have with if clauses’ and to test whether the consciousness-raising activities are effective in solving the problem. To this end, ninety-eight participants were given a pretest on the onset of the activity and a posttest after the activity. The t-test was used to compare the pre and posttest results. The difference between two test results has been found to be statistically significant.

Keywords: If clauses, Syntactic properties, Semantic properties, Consciousness Raising.

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