Consciousness-raising and written error correction for young learners

Abstract

Most experts in teaching children state that teaching grammar in the traditional way is inappropriate for children under the age of ten. However, very little research has been done on the effectiveness of consciousness-raising (C-R) with young learners. An action research (AR) project was conducted in a private language school for children, to investigate if a consciousness-raising project would be an effective way to help children notice and correct the ten most commonly made errors they made in their writing of weekly book reports. It was concluded that this consciousness-raising project was effective and a positive experience for children over the age of ten, but sometimes frustrating and less effective for younger learners. The conclusions reached through this action research project led to changes in school policy on error correction, as well as greater efforts to educate the parents of the students.