A Study Of The Method Of Integrating Form, Meaning And Use In The Teaching Of English Grammar In Chinese Senior High Schools

For many years, the teaching of English grammar in Chinese senior high schools has been time-consuming but not effective because too much attention has been paid to the form rather than the use of the language. With the adoption of the new "Standards of English Curriculum", the cultivation of students'ability to use the language has become the new overall objective of our English courses. Unfortunately, however, there has arisen another undesirable tendency of neglecting the form of the language while too much emphasis is put on its use.Following the constructivist and cognitive-communicative approach, this paper explores the appropriate ways of grammar teaching by combining "form, meaning and use" with a view to enhancing the efficiency of grammar teaching in senior high schools. It gives equal attention to the effective teaching of grammar rules and the proper use of the language so as to help the students turn their language knowledge into language skills. The research methods adopted include literature research, questionnaire survey and teaching experiment.Chapter One is a brief description of the research background and the objectives of the research, the main concepts, and research contents as well as the methodology. Chapter Two is a review of the relevant theories and researches of grammar teaching. Chapter Three discusses how to integrate "form, meaning and use" in the teaching of English grammar on the basis of a questionnaire survey on the students'ways of English learning, particularly how they learn English grammar, including what is going on in their English grammar lessons and what kind of English grammar exercises they usually do. With the help of six teaching examples, this chapter also illustrates how to integrate "form, meaning and use" by elaborating on the combination of explicit and implicit, inductive and deductive modes of grammar teaching, students'autonomous learning and cooperative learning in class, the teaching of English grammar in the vivid situations, and the designing of classroom activities according to the different pragmatic functions. Chapter Four includes a description of our teaching experiment, a comparison between the results of the questionnaire and a discussion of the data. Chapter Five presents the research findings and offers some suggestions. The main findings of the research are as follows. ●Students seem to like the combination of "form, meaning and use" in our teaching of English grammar.●Students' idea of grammar learning has been changed by our new method of teaching grammar by integrating "form, meaning and use".●Students' grammar learning methods and habits have changed after the experiment.●Students' English proficiency can be improved if our approach of grammar teaching is adopted. Our main suggestions for further practice include:●Teachers should carefully design grammar activities according to the pragmatic functions of the target grammatical items.●Teachers should closely monitor the effect of self-directed learning and group learning.●To fulfill the task, teachers of a teaching group should cooperate with each other.