An Empirical Study On Context-based English Grammar Teaching In Precollege

Precollege is a special form in advanced education, which is called “UniversityFoundation Year” or “Bridging course”. It lasts for about one year. In China, students inprecollege often graduate from junior schools. In one thing, students who do not getenough scores in Senior School Entrance Examination would choose precollege tocontinue their further study. Most of them have poor knowledge in English. On the otherhand, some junior schools in rural areas do not pay attention to English teaching, sostudents do not have interest in English. It is known that grammar teaching plays asignificant role in English teaching. Teachers in precollege use the traditional teachingmethods which regard grammar as a kind of knowledge system, as a result, students cannotimprove their interests in learning grammar. This situation cannot satisfy both teachers andstudents, so a new efficient grammar teaching method is necessary to students inprecollege.There are five parts in this thesis. First part is an introduction. Second part is theliterature review on the context theory. In the third part, the author conducts context-basedgrammar teaching experiment which lasts for ten months. The subjects were60students inthe precollege of Training Institute of Bohai University. There are two classes in thisexperiment: Class19is assigned as experiment class, and Class18is as control class.Students in experiment class receive context-based grammar teaching method, whilestudents in control class receive traditional grammar teaching method. The author usesquestionnaires and grammar tests in the process of experiment. The fourth part is the dataanalysis of the thesis. In order to analyze the relevant data, the author uses statisticalsoftware—SPSS. The aim of the experiment is to try to prove that context plays asignificant role in grammar teaching by comparing the results of both groups. The analysisindicates as follow:Firstly, the author conducts the pre-questionnaire to show that students have lowergrammar proficiency and little interest in grammar learning before the experiment, studentsin grammar class tend to receive teacher’s explanations on grammar points;Secondly, context-based grammar teaching method has a positive effect on changingstudents’ grammar learning attitude;Thirdly, context-based grammar teaching method improves students’ proficiency ofgrammar. The fifth part is the conclusion. It makes a review of the whole thesis and gives somesuggestions on applying context into the grammar teaching.The significance of this research lies in: first, this study proves the feasibility andvalidity of the application of context-based methods; second, contextual theory can bemore efficient in English grammar teaching and it can improve students’ English learningproficiency. This study has an enlightened significance for reasonable design of precollegegrammar teaching models, as well as improving teachers’ grammar teaching level andchanging students’ English grammar learning patterns. It hopes that this thesis will helpprecollege English teachers to find a more effective way to instruct English grammar.