The Effect Of Task-Based Approach To College Grammar Teaching

For a long time, grammar has been the emphasis in our English language teaching. And as a result, Chinese students are very good at reciting and analysizing grammar rules, which gives the impression that they learn English very well. However, when it comes to speak and write English to communicate, they make so many errors that teachers or native speakers can't understand them at all.How can we improve the effect of grammar teaching, how can we turn the students'grammar knowledge into their practical communicative ability? As English teachers, such problems are worth thinking and studying.Gemerally speaking, in traditional grammar classes, teacher spends much time explaining and illustrating while students just drill and exercise to consolidate what the teacher says. It's proved by numerous facts that such teaching method on grammar doesn't produce satisfactory results because it fails to provide any effective means to help students master grammar structure and use those forms in real communication. Current studies on second language acquisition indicate that when learners are supposed to understand the language materials and temporarily remembered them, they are not considered to have completely mastered such materials.Two crucial steps are neglected in traditional grammar teaching. These are suitable settings where language are used and the learners initial participating using language to communicate. Instead, they acquire grammar by mechanical recitation and isolated drilling, which leaves them an impression of dry and dull. Therefore, applying Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT) to college grammar classes is not only theoretically sound but also beneficially practical.An experiment is carried out in the research. The subjects for this research were two classes of Chinese EFL college students: both were second-year non-English majors at Wuhan Bioengineering Institute. The two classes comprised two treatment groups, consisting of the experimental group, who received TBLT and acquire grammar by performing tasks, and the control group, who received traditional grammar lessons identical in content to the tasks. No significant differences was found between the means of the final exam scores of the two groups. Therefore, the two classes were considered tobe equivalent.Pre- and posttests are designed to measure the number of attributive clause appeared in students'essays. Using a one-way analysis of variance(ANOVA),we can see no significant differences in the frequency counts among the two groups for the attributive clause in pretest.Task-based Language Teaching is mainly carried out in the way of group work or pair work. Two or more students discuss the sentence structures, describe pictures and talk about plan for spring outing, by which they grasp a certain language form through communication, while the traditional grammar teaching helps students acquire language knowledge by focusing on teacher's explanation, illustration and language practice and drills.The result of the experiment reveals that, compared with pre-test, the number of attributive clause in essays of two groups both rised in posttest, but the experimental group, who received Task-based Language Teaching, created significantly more attributive clauses than the control group, who received traditional grammar teaching. As far as the proportion of correctness is concerned, the proportion of correctness of experimental group is slightly lower than that of the control group, while its proportion of errors is slightly higher than the control group. And by having the errors classified and counted, we found that some kind of errors decreased in both groups in posttest, while other kinds of errors increased with the increasingly use of attributive clauses.The above results indicate the following:1. Grammar teaching should be processed in a certain context. Student's acquire grammar knowledge by using language forms in communicative activities, by which they can establish the relationship between language form and its meaning. Explaining and illustrating grammar rules in a decontexted and isolated means, which only enables learners remember grammar rules but can't ensure they can use these rules naturally and appropriately in communication.2. The relaxed and active atmosphere in class and various kinds of interaction helps to decrease students' anxiety and improve their interests in English learning and effects of study.3. Explaining grammar rules in deductive way helps for students to inspire their initiative and thus deepen their own understanding about the use of rules.4. In the process of Task-based Language teaching, teacher need to design various tasks which enables students both focus on the delivery of meaning, and the correct use of language forms. Thus they keep a balance between fluency and accuracy.5. Language learning including grammar learning is a long and complex process. The problem of errors can't be solved by a few correcting. Only through frequent use of language can errors become less.The thesis is made up of five chapters. The first chapter is introduction. By the experience of her own, the author describes the problems in contemerory college English grammar teaching. And by citing comments of some English experts, the author proposes effective means to grammar teaching. The second chapter is literature review and theoretical evidences, introducing Social Constructive Theory, some experts' views on Second Language Acquisition and procedures and methods on grammar learning. A detailed description on Task-based Language Teaching is also included in this chapter. The third chapter is about the teaching experiment, describing the experiment carried out among two groups of students, who received Task-based Language Teaching and traditional grammar teaching respectively. The fourth chapter is about the results of experiment and analysis on it. The author compared the number of attributive clauses in both groups in pre- and posttest and the changes of errors in the students' essays, analysizing the causes of such change. The fifth chapter is the conclusion, stating the conclusion drawn from the experiment and the revelation for grammar teaching.