A Study On English Grammar Learning Efficacy Of Junior High School Students In China

Grammar has been occupying a vital position in the history of foreign language teaching.However, there has still existed considerable controversy over the function and role ofgrammar among researchers, teachers and students up till now. Some of them advocategrammar teaching and learning while others hold negative attitudes. Meanwhile, the overallstatus of grammar has experienced dynamic changes with the predominant pedagogies over aspecific period of time from the overwhelming dominance and absolute authority to a firmopposition and strong criticism of grammar and finally to a resurgence of attention andinterests in recent years. Besides, the promulgation and implementation of the new NationalEnglish Curriculum Standards for Full-time Compulsory Education have brought significantreform and unprecedented challenges to English grammar teaching and learning in juniorhigh schools. Against the background, it becomes particularly essential and important tomake a full investigation and an elaborate analysis of the current situation of the domesticEnglish grammar teaching and learning.Along with the shift of the research focus in English Language Teaching from “how toteach” to “how to learn”, this thesis initiates the research from the perspective of grammarlearning. It randomly selects168students from three junior high schools in Shandong as theresearch subjects and makes an empirical investigation on English grammar learning efficacyof junior high school students in China by adopting the research methods of literatureanalysis, questionnaires, grammar tests and interviews in combination with an analysis of thecurrently used English teaching materials in order to reveal the current situation and existingproblems in English grammar learning at the junior-high-school level in the hope ofproviding some valuable references for foreign language teaching in China. Learning efficacywhich is defined in the thesis combines the subjective concept of “affective state” with theobjective notion of “academic achievement” and “learning outcomes”. Under the theoreticalframework of learning efficacy and acquisition order, concrete research contents of the thesisare identified, including:(1) the status quo of junior high school students’ affective state inthe English grammar learning process;(2) the profile of students’ grammatical competence atthe stage of junior high school and whether their general grammatical competence lives up to the criteria prescribed in the New English Curriculum Standards;(3) the correlation betweengrammatical competence and the overall linguistic competence;(4) the acquisition order ofvarious grammatical items that junior high school students are required to master.By the aid of the statistical software SPSS version20.0, the thesis conducts a deepanalysis and discussion of the results obtained in the present study and generates thefollowing main findings:(1) both the teachers and students have developed a correctunderstanding or attitude towards the important role that grammar plays in the context ofEnglish Language Teaching in China;(2) more than half of the junior high school studentsstudy grammar with definite and obvious motivation. Students’ extrinsic motivation isobviously superior to their intrinsic motivation;(3) the vast majority of junior high schoolstudents have positive attitudes in English grammar learning;(4) a certain degree of anxietytowards English grammar learning indeed exists in the group of junior high school students,only affecting a small fraction of them;(5) whether in motivation, attitude or anxiety, thereare always a certain number of students with a vague cognition about their affective state ingrammar learning;(6) generally speaking, junior high school students’ grammaticalcompetence stays at an intermediate level and barely lives up to the criteria prescribed in theNew English Curriculum Standards for junior high schools. However, specific conditions ofstudents’ grammatical competence vary considerably among different junior high schools;(7)there definitely exists a significant positive correlation between grammatical competence andthe overall linguistic competence in the middle-school student community. Grammar servesas an effective tool to predict students’ English learning performance and improve theirlanguage skills;(8) the concrete acquisition order of a variety of grammatical items thatjunior high school students are required to learn and master is presented from fouraspects—parts of speech, sentence types, clauses and one aspect of tenses, voices andnon-finite verbs. The acquisition order of parts of speech is articles﹥adverbs﹥numerals﹥adjectives﹥prepositions﹥pronouns﹥conjunctions﹥verbs﹥nouns; the overall acquisitionorder of English sentence types is imperatives﹥affirmative and negative statements﹥interrogative questions﹥There be structure; for the acquisition condition of clauses, the orderobtained here is second conditionals﹥relative clauses with that, which and who﹥first conditionals if+will﹥adverbial clauses with when, while﹥object clauses; in the matter ofeight types of grammatical tenses, the specific acquisition order is present progressive=simplepast﹥present tense﹥future tense﹥past progressive tense﹥present perfect tense﹥presentperfect progressive﹥past perfect. Besides, the acquisition of non-finite verbs precedes thepassive voices of verbs;(9) on the whole, sentence types are the easiest for junior high schoolstudents to acquire; the next are parts of speech; English clauses rank the third and tensesseem to become the most difficult and perplexing grammar points to master;(10) theacquisition order of grammatical tenses, voices and non-finite verbs basically conforms to therules of English grammar teaching and learning. However, the acquisition order of parts ofspeech, sentence types and clauses to a certain extent differs from the order in which therelated grammatical items first appear in the English teaching materials and seems tocontradict the laws of English grammar learning. Five reasons may account for thisphenomenon, which are respectively the theoretical reason, design factors of grammar tests,the sample size of the present study and subject and object factors in English grammarteaching and learning as well as the grammatical setting in English teaching materials and thecharacteristics of grammatical items.Starting from the premise of promoting English Language Teaching in China andradically improving junior high school students’ grammar learning efficacy, the thesis hasgreat practical significance to the current English grammar teaching and learning in juniorhigh schools, which can provide certain valuable references for the theoretical developmentand empirical research of English grammar teaching and learning and acquisition order insecond language acquisition (SLA), the innovation of research perspectives and theconstruction of English teaching materials, etc.