Investigating the Effect of TaskBased Consciousness Raising Activities on EFL Learners’ Use of Past Tense: A Case Study of First Year Students at the Department of English, University of Ouargla

Abstract

Task-based language teaching (TBLT), also known as task-based instruction (TBI), is an approach to language teaching that attempts to engage language learners in interactive use of authentic language through making them perform communicative tasks. There is a great deal of evidence in literature on the value of using authentic tasks for facilitating and promoting language learning, as tasks could be more motivating, engaging and learner-centered than traditional linguistic exercises. The aim of the present study was to adopt task-based language teaching methodology to teaching grammar trough the implementation of consciousness-raising tasks and to examine the effect these tasks might have on EFL students’ understanding and use of the past simple, past perfect and past continuous tenses. The participants of the study included thirty freshmen at the English department of the University of Ouargla during the second semester of the academic year 2021-2022. In addition, an interview was administered with teachers of grammar to elicit information about the teaching methodology they adopt and the approach that underlies it. The researcher followed a procedure based on forming two matching groups (the experimental and the control group), assessing the students by means of pre and post tests and analyzing the results. The statistical procedures for data analysis were arithmetic mean, standard deviation, and t-test. The discussion of the results was sustained by the observations the researcher gathered throughout the teaching experiment. The results of the study revealed that there was no significant difference between task-based activities and traditional PPP grammar teaching in promoting the explicit knowledge about the tenses under investigation. Both approaches resulted in enhancing students’ ability to use the target tenses. However, task- based activities had a more positive effect in the sense that they helped students in the experimental group to reflect better on their writing and be more accurate and confident in expressing themselves orally.