Interactive Task-consciousness Raising Grammar Teaching Method

During the course of development of foreign language teaching, grammar teaching has gone through manyups and downs. In this process, grammar plays an indispensable role in foreign language learning，so thegrammar teaching occupies an important position in foreign language teaching. Traditional grammar-basedlanguage teaching method exclusively focuses on language forms, while the communicative-based teachingmethod solely focalizes on meaning. Lots of studies and teaching practice indicate that focusing on languageforms or meaning alone is insufficient, instead, we should seek the integration of the forms and meaning. Long,Robinson, Doughty, Williams, Ellis, Spada, etc. refer to this integration as ‘Focus on Form (FonF)’. FonF intendsto draws students’ attention overtly to linguistic forms as they arise incidentally in lessons whose overridingfocus is on meaning or communication. FonF can provide an acceptable rationale for foreign language grammarteaching and represents the trend of foreign language instruction. In addition, numerous theoretical andpedagogical studies show that FonF are used widely and efficiently in foreign language teaching. And manyresearchers put forward a lot of grammar teaching methods in communicative contents, including EnhancedInput, Processing Instruction, Explicit Consciousness Raising Task. They all suggested that students should usethe form in authentic task. Applying tasks to grammar teaching can arouse the students’ interest in learninggrammar and let them make connection between form and meaning.Within the framework of FonF, this thesis intends to investigate the specific means (interactivetask-consciousness raising grammar teaching method) to implement such teaching approach for Chinese juniorstudents in English classroom and to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach throughexperiment and interview. The present study employs a pretest-immediate posttest-delayed posttest experimentaldesign, and the participants of the present study are56students from four junior middle schools whom theresearcher taught in a training school in Nan Jing. They were randomly assigned to two intact grammar classes atthe similar level, where one is experimental group and the other is control group. The experimental groupaccepts the Interactive task-consciousness raising grammar teaching method and the treatment consists of threetasks: Consciousness-Raising output task, Input Enhancement task, Communicative tasks. The control groupaccepts traditional PPP grammar teaching method. The test instruments include constrained constructedresponses (multiple choices) and free responses.In the end，the results of the experiment imply:1) Instruction has a positive effect on the development ofinterlanguage grammar;2) The present method is more effective in more difficult grammar;3) The present model is more communicative orientated;4) The resent model has a Long effect on learning of the three targetgrammar (passive voice; attributive clause; modal verbs);5) The present model can improve students’ interestsin learning grammar. The results of the study partly support all the four hypotheses. Hypothesis1: Theinteractive task-consciousness raising grammar teaching method will improve the junior students’ learning ofpassive voice. Hypothesis2: The interactive task-consciousness raising grammar teaching method will improvethe junior students’ learning of attributive clause. Hypothesis3: The interactive task-consciousness raisinggrammar teaching method will improve the junior students’ learning of modal verbs. Hypothesis4: Theinteractive task-consciousness raising grammar teaching method will improve the junior students’ interest inlearning grammar.Based on the present study, this thesis advocates for the Interactive Task-Consciousness Raising grammarteaching method. It enables students to use the three target forms (passive voice; attributive clause; modal verbs)more freely and correctly and to help improve students’ interest in grammar learning. The current study has putforward a tentative explanation for the effect of the interactive task-consciousness raising grammar teachingmethod in language teaching, but there are also some limitations. This study is only conducted in a short periodof time, which can not show the development of the learners. And the small-scale of the study makes the resultsof the study not typical and persuasive enough. Accordingly，the above limitations should be noticed andmodified in the further research.