A Study On The Application Of Figure-Ground Theory To English Inversion Teaching

The importance of grammar to English learning has made the grammar teaching in actual classroom particularly essential. As one of the difficult and key points in grammar teaching, the English Inversion structure is tough for students to grasp, even after plenty of exercises. With the development of the cognitive linguistics, new teaching methods and ideas are constantly emerging. As an important theory in cognitive linguistics, the Figure-Ground Theory can be applied to explain the English Inversion.In this thesis, the author employs the Figure-Ground Theory as the theoretical framework and applies this theory into the inversion teaching. In order to validate the effectiveness of the Figure-Ground Theory teaching method, the author adopts both quantitative and qualitative research methods. 62 freshmen who just get eighteen points in the pre-test are chosen as the experimental subjects and are equally divided into the experimental class and the control class. The author applies the Figure-Ground Theory based teaching mode to the experimental class, while adopts the traditional method to the control class. The duration of the experimental research is five weeks with a pre-test, teaching procedure, an immediate post-test, a delayed post-test and an interview inclusion. This thesis means to explore the two following questions:(1) Are there any different effects between the cognitive teaching approach and the traditional teaching approach when it comes to teaching English Inversion?(2) If there are different effects, which of the two teaching methods can help students understand and master the English Inversion better? By collecting and analyzing the testing data, the author finds that the testing scores of the experimental class are better than those in the control class both in immediate post-test and delayed post-test, which also indicates that the Figure-Ground Theory teaching method can help the student to understand and grasp the English Inversion grammar better.With this research, the author verifies the effectiveness of the Figure-Ground Theory into English inversion structure teaching in university, which not only provides a new teaching mode for teachers, but also offers an effective way for students to understand and acquire the inverted structure. Besides, the training process gets the students know the internal cognitive mechanism underlying the language phenomena, encourages students’ learning interest and improves students’ learning effects. Compared with the traditional teaching method, the Figure-Ground Theory teaching method makes the English inversion easier to accept.