What is Consciousness Raising? There are two types: direct and indirect. The direct approach is the traditional type: teachers present grammatical rules to students who must then attempt to understand them. The indirect approach allows students to ‘discover’ rules through the completion of an activity. The  files presented here are of the indirect kind. The activities address sentences in relation to notions of time (present, habitual, past and future). There is also one file (except module one) that raises awareness for question forms related to these same notions. The procedures below can also be found on the second slide of each flash file.

 

1) Go to the third slide. Print out the table, have the students copy it on their own paper or copy it to a white board. For group and pair work, assign one student in each unit to fill in the table. For a whole class activity, simply prompt students in a collaborative fashion and fill in the table on a white board, following their commands.

2) Have the students identify the verb forms in the sentences and/or questions for each illustration. Have them place these various forms in the table.

3) Complete the table (there are fourteen different examples in each activity).

4) Have the students check their table with the completed one at the end of the file.

5) Read through the completed sentences.

6) Have the students discuss the different forms and guide them to make up a rule for the given tense.

7) Go to the last slide and have the students state whether they agree or disagree with the sentences that relate to the verb form. Follow up with discussion.