An Empirical Study Of The Usage-based Teaching Model Of Construction Grammar For College English Learning

Grammar has been the focus in the field of foreign language teaching for centuries.Grammar teaching is an important part of language teaching.Language can't function without grammar,just as mind can't function without logical thinking.As one of the three basic elements of language,grammar has a direct effect on students' comprehensive language application ability.Without grammar,little can be conveyed and communication can't happen.Furthermore,grammar plays a positive role in improving students' language accuracy and language fluency in linguistic communication.Therefore,grammar teaching is the key to success of language teaching.The author of the present study found some particular problems in students' language learning while teaching the college English.They can be summarized as follows: First,students' grammar learning efficiency is poor.Students equate grammar learning with the learning of grammatical rules and frequently cram grammatical rules,which not only puts a heavyburden on memory,but also results in a low efficiency.Second,students' language expressions are neither accurate nor fluent.Such grammatical problems as discollocation,disagreements,ambiguous reference of pronouns,incoherence,redundancy and wrong combination of sentence patterns can be commonly found in students' oral and written utterances.Thus,their language accuracy and fluency badly need improvement.Third,students lack guidance of learning strategies and have a poor awareness about learning strategies.Influenced by the traditional grammar teaching,students usually adopt strategies of rote memorization and repetitive exercises to learn grammar,and thus show low interest and motivation in grammar learning.The lack of strategies tends to make a negative impact on students' language learning achievements and development of comprehensive language application ability.The purpose of the present study is to help students improve their grammar learning efficiency,promote their language accuracy and fluency,enhance their learning strategies,and strengthen their comprehensive language application ability.Guided by Construction Grammar,related usage-based theories and theories of learning strategies,the author composed the usage-based teaching model of Construction Grammar(the UBCT model)for the learning of the College English program.The UBCT model abides by the following procedures: identification of constructions,high frequencyinput,inference and generalization,and productive output.Identification of constructions refers to the identification in context of similar sets of instantial constructions by students by using their prior knowledge and cognitive strategies.High frequency input refers to adopting various methods and activities to assist students in inputting the target constructions as a whole based on high frequency.There are diverse ways of input,such as visual input,auditory input and kinesthetic input,to promote students' language acquisition.Inference and generalization refers to inferring and generalizing schematic constructions or common usage of the target constructions from the similar sets of instantial constructions.Productive output refers to output of a number of instantial constructions according to the schematic constructions or the common laws of the target constructions and experience of the real application of the target constructions in a variety of interactive activities.The UBCT model was implemented in a class of forty sophomores from the College of Arts at Wenzhou University for two months and a half.The author adopted such research methods as tests in construction and writing and a questionnaire survey to verify the effectiveness of the UBCT model.Analyzed by SPSS 20.0 and the descriptive statistic method,the results of the experiment are as follows:(1)Students' grammar learning efficiency has been improved.(2)Students' language expressions have been more accurate andfluent,and their writing performance has been promoted.(3)Students' learning strategies have been gradually enhanced.The findings above suggest that the UBCT model has a significant effect on improving students' grammatical competence,language expression ability and learning strategies,which is instructive to grammar teaching in college.Due to the author's limited research energy and limited knowledge level,the research has some limitations,such as insufficient experimental time,small samples,etc.In the future research,the author will strive to lengthen experimental time to at least one year and to enlarge experimental samples to more classes with subjects from different majors at different levels of English.