An Empirical Study Of The Application Of PACE Model To Senior English Grammar Instruction

Grammar instruction as the important part of English teaching has caused a lot of controversies,such as those over implicit grammar method and explicit grammar method.The development of Communicative Approach makes students improve oral communicative competence in our country,but the situation of “neglect of grammar knowledge” becomes the newest problem in English instruction.How to teach grammar? How to improve students’ communicative competence and grammar competence in grammar instruction? These are always direction that researchers and teachers tend to explore.Adair-Hauck and Donato came up with the PACE model that combines grammar rules and communicative competence in the class in 1994,which enables students to communicate correctly and effectively.PACE is an abbreviation of P-Presentation of meaningful language materials,A-Attention,C-Co-construction an explanation and E-Extension activities.The thesis uses the PACE model in senior English grammar instruction class and researches the following questions:(1)Can the use of the PACE model in senior English grammar instruction improve students’ English grammar achievements?(2)What is the recognition degree of students of the PACE model? The subjects of this thesis are senior-one students from Xiaodian No.1Senior High School from Taiyuan.Class 1(experimental class)and Class 2(control class)both have 30 students and they are two parallel classes.The comparisons and analysis of pre-test and post-test are used to prove whether the PACE model is better than traditional PPP method in grammar instruction.The results of experiment lasting about 5 months show that students’ English achievements in experimental class is better than that in control class.After experiment,students of experimental class accept research of recognition degree of the PACE model,including the importance of grammar or learning in context.And the findings indicate that students of experimental class have high recognition in the importance of grammarlearning,but the recognition of communicative activities and taking part in class activities is low.One reason is that students who had been exposed to traditional method are used to teacher’s explanation of grammar rules.The other reason is that when teachers apply a new teaching model in class,they need to take into full account of students’ learning styles,learning habits and so on,follow progressive principle and use the new teaching model flexibly.In sum,the PACE model is a new grammar instruction model that gives many suggestions for grammar instruction.For instance,teachers use meaningful language materials to simulate students’ learning interests;teacher can apply flexible and diversified teaching methods to improve students’ comprehending competence of grammar;students do self-reflection by effective assessment activities and so on.