Application Of Situational Language Teaching To The English Grammar Teaching In Rural Junior High Schools

Grammar plays an important part in English language teaching and it is necessary to master English grammar to improve the ability of English language. The ultimate goal of grammar teaching is to combine the form, meaning and usage of language in authentic language use to help students accurately communicate in English rather than mechanically memorize the rules of language. As the New English Curriculum Standard put forward clearly, teaching in the classroom should try to connect the students’ real life, create scenarios communication activities, and enhance students’ learning interest. Grammar teaching in the past only pays attention to the language structure, ignoring the cultural connotation of the language and lack of real situations and communication. Therefore, in the use of language, the students often can use correct language forms but in an inappropriate situation. This does not mean that the teaching of English grammar is wrong but that teaching method should be improved. In teaching practice, though some teachers have realized the importance of grammar teaching, but they do not know what and how to adopt what kind of teaching methods. It is particularly crucial to explore an effective teaching strategy of grammar teaching under the background of new curriculum. In recent years, Situational Language Teaching has become one of the main methods of our foreign language teaching. Situational Language Teaching emphasizes creating meaningful scenes activities in the classroom, paying attention to the cultural connotation of the language in the tangible scenes, making new language knowledge and training closely combined in the process of sensing, i.e. teacher trains the grammar teaching and cultivate communicative ability of the students together through Situational Language Teaching. Guided by Krashen’s Input Hypotheses, Constructivist Learning Theory and Situated Cognition, this thesis discusses the Situational Language Teaching applied in grammar teaching based on English grammar teaching in rural junior high schools classroom. The creation of high correlation context and activity of target grammar items will realize the teaching goal of form, meaning, use being well-combined. The meaningful language teaching activities facilitate students actively and happily participate in class, through observation, experience,refining, students can transform what they have learned into language skills in the process of using language learning grammar.Comparing the teaching experiment of situational grammar teaching and traditional grammar teaching,the author researches and discusses the following two problems:(1) Can English grammar teaching in the framework of SLT in junior high schools improve thelearners’ attitudes towards English Grammar learning more effectively than the traditional teaching method?(2) Can English grammar teaching in the framework of SLT in junior high schools improve the learners’ achievement in grammar tests more effectively than the traditional teaching method?To test the effectiveness of situational grammar teaching in practical English teaching in junior high schools, this research uses the experiment combined with the method of test and questionnaire survey of empirical research for 8 weeks. The experiment subjects came from two intact classes of No.26 middle school in Lanzhou city. With the comparative and superlative of adjectives and adverbs as teaching contents, the experimental class adopted the situational grammar teaching method, while the control group used the traditional grammar teaching method. The data of the tests and questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS19.0 to study the grammar attitudes changed with the new teaching method in the framework of SLT.The data of interview was written on the paper and will be analyzed in detail. The researcher collected and analyzed three parts of data in the whole experiment, including the data from questionnaires, tests and interview to answer the questions proposed above.The results of the experimental data shows that situational grammar teaching not only helps to improve students’ attitudes in grammar learning than the traditional grammar teaching, but also help to improve students’ grammatical grades. The author also analyzes and discusses the results of the main differences between the two kinds of teaching methods reflected in the classroom and its inspiration to our teaching. It is surprising to find that some students come from experimental class who are less successful in study are engaged in activities and strive to be the first to use their mother tongue to express their ideas.Through analyzing the data of questionnaires and tests, this research proves that Situational Language Teaching is better than traditional teaching method in improving students’ attitudes and confidence of grammar learning, which is very helpful to improve teaching effect. Finally, this paper summarizes the research, reflects the limitations including the short experimental time, the inexperience of the researcher and some uncontrollable factors of the subjects and put forward suggestions on Situational Language Teaching for English grammar teaching in rural junior high schools.