Application Of Context-based Grammar Teaching Approach In Junior High School

Grammar is an important part of English learning. It is pointed out in the New English CurriculumStandards that grammar, as an indispensable part of the language knowledge, plays an important role inimproving the learner’s ability to use English proficiently, and so grammar teaching becomes an essentialpart in English teaching. However, with the implementation of the New English Curriculum Standards,teachers in junior high school understand it differently and grammar teaching in junior high school goesinto two different kinds of extremes: one is that teachers continue the traditional3P method and grammarteaching focuses on the isolated interpretation of grammatical rules; The other is that some teachers tendto weaken or even ignore the teaching of grammar system. As a result of both cases, students take littleinterest in grammar learning. Moreover, most students are incapable of using grammar rules in certaincontext appropriately, accurately and flexibly, and the effect of grammar teaching is not ideal.Grammatical forms and its context are closely related. Different grammatical forms exist dependingon different contexts, and different contexts rely on different grammatical forms to communicate meaning.In order to improve the inefficiency of grammar teaching in junior high school, the study appliescontext-based grammar teaching approach in junior high school, in which grammar items are taught notin isolation, but in different contexts set by the teacher where students can perceive, explore, use andinternalize the grammar items. In this study, a teaching experiment was carried out, in whichcontext-based grammar teaching approach was used to teach adverbial clause to79students in Gradeeight from two intact classes. Randomly, class7was treated as experimental class and class8as controlclass, and the teaching experiment lasted for two months. Three kinds of research instruments were usedin this study: questionnaire, test and interview. All the data were processed and analyzed by SPSS13.0.The analysis of data shows that the context-based grammar teaching approach can help to increase thejunior high school students’ interest in learning English grammar, improve their grammatical competence,and is more effective than the traditional3P method.Altogether, context-based grammar teaching approach has certain implications for grammarteaching in junior high school. To begin with, English teachers should develop correct grammarperspective. Moreover, grammar teaching could be designed based on different kinds of meaningfulcontexts. These contexts are suitable for the target grammar, interesting and close to students’ life, and allow students to learn the form, meaning and use of grammar items in concrete contexts to developstudents’ comprehensive ability to use the language of English.