Learners, Be (a)ware!
Consciousness Raising and Its Application to English Language Teaching
Patrisius Istiarto Djiwandono
Consciousness raising (CR) is a
technique that brings language learners’ attention to certain linguistic
properties in the input they are receiving. This cognitive process enables them
to internalize the linguistic properties of the target language. The process
accords with some current principles in language learning that have been
derived from the field of language acquisition, the most important ones being
the input hypothesis, silent period, and processing instruction. The similarity
of these techniques is that they allow some time for the learners to silently
process the target language input, restructure their developing system, which
in turn brings themselves to the point where they are ready to produce target
language utterances. The paper argues that CR can be applied to make learners
aware not only of grammatical structures but also of rhetorical structures of
discourse. In this aspect, CR covers a broader area of language proficiency.
The paper elaborates on three main aspects of CR, namely noticing the features
to be learned, doing repeated practice in identifying the features, and
progressing from simpler, teacher-made input to more complex, more authentic
input. After a theoretical discussion, the paper proceeds with a number of
applications of the CR technique to the teaching and testing productive as well
as receptive skills. The paper argues that testing in a CR framework should
focus on measuring how well the students can notice the targeted input and
respond to its corresponding task accordingly.
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Djiwandono, P. I. (2003, November). Learners,
be (a)ware! Consciousness raising
and its application to English language teaching.
Paper presented at the 38th RELC International Seminar,
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