A Study On The Application Of Constructivism To English Grammar Teaching In Senior High School

Grammar is an indispensable part of language.It is also difficult for the Chinese students to learn English grammar. For a long time, English grammar teaching has been a controversial topic in English teaching. Nowadays, in English grammar teaching, there are two main misconceptions:one is that communicative competence is emphasized while the importance of grammar knowledge and the accuracy of language are neglected; the other is that the teachers employ the less efficient traditional grammar teaching methods, which get the students exhausted by making notes in class and doing lots of grammar exercises after class. In order to improve the unsatisfactory situation in many senior high schools at present, the author tries to put the constructivist theory into grammar teaching practice.The constructivist theory first appeared in the psychological and philosophical field. Nowadays, it has been employed in teaching by educational researchers.Firstly,constructivist learning theory emphasizes the student-centered teaching approach. Students are the active constructors of meaning and knowledge. Secondly, constructivism lays emphasis on the cooperation and communication between the students and teachers.Thirdly, constructivist theory stresses the importance of authentic situation, in which the students can construct their own knowledge more actively and effectively. Constructivism is an advanced theory system and it plays a more and more important role in English teaching.This thesis presents an overview of the development of grammar teaching, pointing out the disadvantages of the previous teaching methods.Based on constructivism and the constructivist model of foreign language teaching, the author conducted an experiment to the students of two ordinary classes of Senior2for one semester. The control class was taught with the traditional grammar-translation method while the experimental class was instructed with the constructivist teaching approach. The pre-test and post-test, questionnaires and interview are the research instruments in this experiment. Then the data are collected and analyzed. Through the comparison between the control class and the experimental class, the constructivism-based English grammar teaching method proves to be more scientific and more effective than the traditional one.It provides a fresh perspective and solution to English grammar teaching research in senior high school.