Peer interaction, cognitive conflict, and anxiety on a Grammar Awareness course for language teachers

Abstract

This study explored some MA students’ perceptions of a Grammar Awareness course for language teachers. The aim was to understand how group tasks might help students build Grammar Awareness. Two cohorts of students were surveyed and interviewed. In this paper, the survey responses are discussed in some depth. While the first cohort was left to organise their groups as they wished, the second cohort used a more structured, cooperative framework. The paper compares the two cohorts, and novice and experienced teachers, to see (1) whether novice and experienced teachers benefited equally or differentially and (2) what effect the changes had. Central features of the pedagogy were the use of authentic texts and open-ended group tasks. The intention was to create cognitive conflict as an impetus for engagement and in-depth negotiations, leading to knowledge creation. The novice teachers on the whole found tasks and texts more difficult and had greater problems focusing on the task. The more structured group work led to increased task focus in both groups and more active participation by the TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) students, and thus appeared to facilitate engagement with the language, but anxiety was high and increased for the TESOL students in the second cohort.

Keywords:

• anxiety
• authentic text
• grammar awareness
• cognitive conflict
• collaborative learning
• cooperative group work

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for very helpful comments. The completion of this study and paper was made possible by a period of research leave granted by the University of Leicester. The author is grateful in particular for the support of colleagues in the School of Education.

Notes

1. ‘Language Awareness can be defined as explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language learning, language teaching and language use’ (http://www.lexically.net/ala/la_defined.htm; 13 October 2010).

2. It was not possible to include a quantitative measure of knowledge at entry, or of outcomes, one reason being the difficulty of measuring grammar awareness holistically, i.e in the way it was taught. The author hopes to address this issue in a separate research project.

3. During the first cohort, there were no keys to the exercises in the set text. By the second cohort, the publishers were providing a key on a dedicated website (Greenbaum and Nelson [2002]).