The Effect of Consciousness-raising Tasks on Collocational Competence of Iraqi EFL Learners

Abstract

This research explores the effectiveness of two instructional strategies, input enhancement (an implicit technique) and consciousness-raising (an explicit approach), on developing grammatical and lexical collocation knowledge among Iraqi learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). A total of sixty participants with pre-intermediate English proficiency were selected in Iraq and randomly assigned to one control group and two experimental groups. To ensure baseline equivalency in collocational knowledge, all participants completed a pre-test prior to instruction. Over six instructional sessions, each group engaged with the same reading materials but received different forms of instruction. A post-test was administered one week after the final session to assess learning outcomes. The results showed that input enhancement had no significant impact on grammatical collocation acquisition but did lead to notable improvements in lexical collocation knowledge. In contrast, the consciousness-raising method significantly improved both grammatical and lexical collocation knowledge. Furthermore, learners in the consciousness-raising group outperformed those in both the input enhancement and control groups. These findings offer valuable insights for curriculum planners, instructional material designers, language teachers, and learners..