The Effects Of Three Dimensional Grammar Approach On The Acquisition Of Attributive Clauses By Senior High School Students With Different English Grammatical Competences

Grammar is an indispensable part in English,and it’s undeniable that students’ grammatical competence affects their language competence directly;thus,for Chinese learners,grammar is also a tough problem that must be solved when learning English because no sentences can be made and no meaning can be conveyed by vocabulary alone.After stages of focusing on form,focusing on meaning and focusing on communication,Larsen-Freeman proposed a new mode which dynamically integrate three dimensions,namely form,meaning and use.The following theoretical and empirical studies proved that this mode was of good efficiency and that’s why Curriculum Standard for Senior High School English(2017 Edition)also recognizes that grammar knowledge is the unity of“form—meaning—use”,however,with the improvement of the theoretical framework of three dimensional grammar approach,the related researches also take on a trend of solidification.Thus,this study abandoned the common control groups in the experiment and focused on solving three concrete research questions:(1)What effects does grammar teaching based on three dimensional grammar approach have on the acquisition of attributive clause of students with high grammatical competence? And why?(2)What effects does grammar teaching based on three dimensional grammar approach have on the acquisition of attributive clause of students with medium grammatical competence? And why?(3)What effects does grammar teaching based on three dimensional grammar approach have on the acquisition of attributive clause of students with low grammatical competence? And why?In this study,108 senior grade one students from a four-star senior high school in Jiangsu Province were selected as the research participants.According to their grammar test scores,they were divided into three groups,namely high level,medium level and low level,and three dimensional grammar teaching experiment was conducted.After the experiment,the influence on the three groups of students was studied.The data mainly came from the pre-questionnaire,post-questionnaire and scores of pre-test and post-test.The major findings are:(1)Three dimensional grammar approach has a positive impact on the overall grammar acquisition of the students of different levels.(2)Three dimensional grammar approach has a positive impact on all of the three dimensions of the high level and medium level students,but the low level students only show significant differences in dimensions of form and meaning.(3)Students of high level and medium level take on a more significant difference than that of low level students;therefore,the higher students’ grammatical competence levels are,the more they will benefit from three dimensional grammar approach.To sum up,although three dimensional grammar approach is of universal significance in improving students’ grammar acquisition,students with different grammatical competences benefit from it differently.From the perspective of inter-subjectivity theory,the higher students’ grammatical competence levels are,the more extensively and actively they will be involved in classroom dialogues and interactions which means their participation in the dynamic teaching process advocated by three dimensional grammar approach is more effective;as a result,they will benefit more from it.This study also inspires English teachers to integrate the three dimensions organically and dynamically,and encourage students to summarize grammatical rules independently,fully interpret grammatical meaning and explore grammatical use cooperatively.