A Tentative Exploration Of Teaching Grammar To Vocational Students Through Activity-based Approach

There exist heated debates on grammar teaching, not only on the necessity of grammar teaching, but also on the method of teaching. Natural Approach, Direct Method and Communicative Language Teaching are common in recent grammar teaching. Activity-based grammar teaching derives from Communicative Language Teaching. It emphasizes the importance of organizing a course in context and requires the learners first' to study examples through activities and work the rules out for themselves. Through successive stages of trial, error, and feedback, the learner's output is fine-tuned for accuracy and fluency.Grammar teaching is an important part of English learning in China. Many teachers teach discrete grammar items without context. Lessons began with an explicit statement of the rule, followed by exercises involving translation and transformation. Learners accepted the rules negatively which hurt their enthusiasm of learning. Without practice in real context, they couldn't apply the rules in communication fluently and accurately. The thesis attempts to study the implementation of activity-based approach in grammar teaching of vocational school so as to confirm its feasibility in teaching grammar. Analysis of domestic and overseas reference documents, analysis of what is drawn from the experiment and survey of the questionnaires are three methods adopted in the study.Based on Communicative Language Teaching and Focus on Forms, this thesis discusses the basic principles for grammar teaching and then designs the teaching procedures of grammar teaching according to the framework of Scott Thornbury and George Yule. One sample of activity-based grammar teaching model is given for further illustration. By means of comparison of the results and analysis of the questionnaires between the experimental class and controlled class the writer tries to get the advantages and disadvantage of the practical application of activity-based approach. The research result shows activity-based grammar teaching is welcomed in the teaching practice. It is beneficial to the students, changes their attitude towards English study and improves the efficiency of English learning. The writer believes that it has a positive meaning to apply activity-based approach to grammar teaching practice.The writer hopes other teachers who are practicing this kind of teaching pattern can use this thesis for reference, in case their goal is also to improve the teaching quality of English lessons in a vocational school.