The Application Of Explicit Consciousness-Raising Task Model To Grammar Teaching In China Senior Middle Schools

During the course of development of foreign language teaching, grammar teaching has gone through many ups and downs:from the Grammar-Translation Method, the Direct Method, the Audio-Lingual Method, the Cognitive-Code Method and the Communicative Language Teaching Approach to the task-based instruction and so on. Seen from this constantly upgraded evolution, grammar plays an indispensable role in foreign language learning, so the grammar teaching occupies a pivotal position in the foreign language teaching.However, the status quo of grammar teaching is not satisfactory enough, resulting from the persistent divergence on the question of how to teach grammar effectively. As for the current situation of grammar teaching in China senior middle schools, there are two popular tendencies:the traditional Three P's model and the Communicative Language Teaching approach. The traditional Three P's model focuses on the language form, which attaches great importance to the language points and grammatical rules, while the Communicative Language Teaching model focuses on the meaning, and it mainly uses a lot of communicative tasks to teach grammar with meaningful practice. But, both of the approaches have obvious limitations and weaknesses:the traditional Three P's model neglects the use of language so that students cannot use the target language freely and fluently in real communication; the Communicative Language Teaching approach underestimates the role of grammar, resulting in the dissatisfactory accuracy of students'language output. Therefore, the two common present grammar teaching methods are both one-sided, and they cannot help learners make considerable progress in grammar learning. Under the circumstance of either overemphasizing grammar or excessively ignoring grammar, the grammar teaching in China senior middle schools urgently needs a more scientific and enlightened way out:an ideal way which can combine the form with the meaning and also balance the fluency and accuracy of language use. Exactly, the explicit consciousness-raising task model (ECT model) put forward by Ellis (2003) is the one that researchers have been looking for.The explicit consciousness-raising task model refers to the instructional strategies employed in communicative-oriented activities to draw learners' attention to the form of the target language and to encourage learners to conclude their own explicit grammatical norms from the data they are offered. The model suggests that multiplying the ways of explicit information input, drawing learners'attention to the target language form and assisting learners to acquire inductive knowledge is an effective means to improve learners'language input and output.The present study applies the explicit consciousness-raising task model to grammar teaching in a senior middle school in order to testify its feasibility and effectiveness in the practical teaching process. The present study employed the "pre-test—experiment—post-test" quasi-experiment, along with the questionnaires as a supplementary means. Two ready-made classes of Grade One (Class Nine and Class Ten) were selected as the Experimental Group and the Control Group respectively. The Experimental Group accepted the explicit consciousness-raising task model while the Control Group received the Three P's model. A pre-test, a post-test and questionnaires were adopted during the eight weeks'empirical study. The target grammatical structure selected in this study was English attributive clause, for the attributive clause is usually regarded as a special difficulty to Chinese learners who are always confused about its usage. In the end, the results of the experiment proved the two hypotheses of the research:1. Compared with the traditional Three P's model, the application of the explicit consciousness-raising task model to grammar teaching in senior middle schools better improves learners'English grammatical proficiency.2. Compared with the traditional Three P's model, the application of the explicit consciousness-raising task model to grammar teaching in senior middle schools better increases learners'interest and motivation to grammar learning.In a word, the explicit consciousness-raising task model is a more effective foreign language teaching method, and it provides the English grammar teaching with a fresh perspective.