| Grammar plays an important role in comprehending and making use of language. Therefore, grammar instruction should not be neglected in English teaching and learning. An investigation showed that in China, some teachers in senior high schools preferred the traditional grammar teaching method due to some factors. This method could be described as a rule followed by one example and then more exercises, the sequence of which are "rule 1…example 1…rule 2…example 2…exercise 1…exercise 2…". What's more, the present author made another investigation which suggested that this traditional grammar teaching method suffered from shortcomings in increasing germane cognitive load and keeping the grammatical point in long-term memory. Based on Cognitive Load Theory, some scholars have found that the higher germane cognitive load, the higher the learning efficiency. In view of this finding, several researchers have studied on the ways of matching examples and problems. And then the example-problem-solving mode was proposed, in which examples and exercise are in alternate way, like "rule 1…example 1…exercise 1…rule 2…example 2…exercise 2…". As far as the studies on this mode are concerned, some scholars have done comparative studies in the fields of math, medicine and other subjects. And they found that the example-problem-solving mode is superior to the traditional method.Considering the problems resulted from the traditional grammar teaching method and the advantages of the example-problem-solving mode, the present study is meant to conduct a comparative experiment by applying the example-problem-solving mode to the English grammar teaching in senior high schools with an aim to testify the example-problem-solving mode is more effective than the traditional teaching mode in increasing the learners'germane cognitive load in learning grammatical point; the example-problem-solving mode is superior to the traditional grammar teaching one in increasing the germane cognitive load of the learners with high prior knowledge (HPK) and the ones with low prior knowledge (LPK) in terms of the grammatical point under investigation; the example-problem-solving mode is more effective than the traditional one in long retention about the grammatical point.Two classes with 122 students in grade one from No.2 Senior High School, Linzhang County are involved in the present experiment. The students in one of the classes, Class 4 served as the experimental group (EG), were taught under the example-problem mode. The students in the other class, Class 3 treated as the control group (CG), were guided under the traditional grammar teaching mode. Besides, according to their scores of the pre-test before the treatment, the subjects in Class 3 and Class 4 were divided into two parts respectively:25% of the students whose scores were listed on the top were the learners with high prior knowledge and 25% of the students whose scores were listed at the end were the learners with low prior knowledge. All the students in these two classes took part in the pre-test, treatment, post-test and delayed post-test. The experiment has lasted for 3 weeks and the grammar to be taught and checked is the attributive clause conducted by the relative adverbs when, where and why. The measurement of germane cognitive load in the present study is efficiency measure based on a combination of post-test performance and mental effort invested in the post-test, which is obtained by the 9-point scale (Paas,1992). The higher the efficiency, the higher the germane cognitive load. The collected data are analyzed by the means of an Independent Samples T-test and Paired Samples T-test in SPSS 11.0 Version. The results are shown as follows:a. The efficiency scores of EG are higher than those of CG and they differed significantly. In other words, germane cognitive load of EG is higher than those of CG.b. The efficiency scores of the HPK subjects from EG are higher than those of the HPK subjects from CG and they differed significantly. In other words, germane cognitive load of the HPK subjects from EG is higher than those from CG.c. There was no significant difference between the efficiency scores of the LPK subjects in two groups.d. EG's performance in the delayed post-test is better than CG's performance in the delayed post-test. In other words, the example-problem-solving mode is more effective than the traditional grammar teaching mode in long retention about the grammatical point.In a word, the example-problem-solving mode is more effective than the traditional teaching method in improving teaching efficiency in English grammar teaching in senior high schools. Hence, this mode has more practical significance than the traditional one.
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