A Study On The Application Of Corpus-based Ddl Approach In EFL Classroom Grammar Teaching In Junior High School

As it is observed that students are always lack of motivation to learn grammar while lots of grammatical mistakes appearing in their speaking or writing English. And the present grammar teaching approach is more like a deductive way in which perspective grammar is more focused on. Meanwhile, due to the increasing development of corpus linguistics the corpus-based data-driven learning(DDL) approach seen as a ground-breaking approach has got more and more attention. It force us to pay attention to the raising of students’ automatic learning ability. However, till now, many of the researches study on application of DDL in effective lexical teaching to college students who already have some basic language knowledge. There is still a need for much more empirical researches with lower level students before concordances find the way to EFL(English as Foreign Language) classrooms.This research tries to investigate whether these junior high school students will have better performance in grammar learning when involved in DDL approach and to observe the response of junior high school students and teachers to the nature of corpus input and a more learner-centered class. The experiment lasts nearly six weeks with almost 12 hours for grammar teaching. At first, teachers and students are trained to learn how to use and conduct the corpora. Then, various concordancing tasks are designed in printout form for the EG(experimental group), whereas conventional grammar activities are designed for the CG(control group) comparatively. The empirical evidence drawn from the quantitative data of the results of quizzes and questionnaires and qualitative analysis of the interviews shows the results of the experiment.It reveals that DDL approach is effective in junior high school grammar teaching. It improves students’ performance in grammar after-class quizzes. It also develops students’ consciousness and ability of grammar learning. Teachers are rethinking students’ position in class while students are being more motivated and confident in grammar learning. But it still needs to be emphasized that teachers plays a significant role in class before learners can adapt to the concordance format and an automatic learning way. And the DDL should be regarded as a complement to conventional grammar teaching approaches by now. Besides, a more appropriate corpus for junior high school students’ language teaching and learning is in urgent need, which should be more practical and more acceptable.