A Study On The Correlation Between English Grammatical Competence Of Middle School Students And Their English Proficiency

In the field of second language acquisition, extensive studies have been conducted on the learners’ explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge. However, discussions on grammatical competence from the perspective of explicit and implicit knowledge are scarce. Furthermore, investigations on students’ English proficiency from the angle of grammatical competency are scarcer. In this paper, tests, course achievements and a questionnaire are applied to the correlation study between the English grammatical competency of Middle School Students and their English proficiency, the purpose of which is to explore the relationship between the learners’ explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge and their English proficiency.On the basis of the comprehensive review both home and abroad on grammatical competence and correlation studies on grammatical competence and English proficiency, the author outlines the theoretical framework for this thesis, including the definitions and classification of grammar, the measurement and operationalization of explicit and implicit knowledge and the learners’ English proficiency. Under the guidance of the theoretical framework, two tests are designed to measure the learners’ explicit knowledge and implicit knowledge, with a questionnaire to complement the tests. The subjects are 600 middle school students across three grades from three schools of different levels in the city of Gongqingcheng.The results of study shows:(1) Middle school students’ explicit and implicit grammatical competencies are both enhanced as their grade grows. Grade One and Grade Two belong to one homogeneous group, which is the lower group. Grade Three is classified as the higher group. (2) Students’explicit knowledge learned in class cannot be completelyinternalized into their implicit knowledge. Students’ explicit grammatical competency is, on average, higher than that of their implicit. (3) Both explicit and implicit grammatical competencies correlate to the students’English proficiency. Lower-grade students rely more on their explicit grammatical competency while higher-grade students depend more on their implicit grammatical competency. (4) Explicit grammatical competency does a great deal to the parts ofvocabulary, grammarand writing in the test andimplicit grammatical competency contributes a lot to the reading and comprehensive parts.Based on these conclusions, the author puts forward some suggestions, at the end of the thesis, on explicit and implicit grammar teaching and grammar competency development. Firstly, attention should be paid to the shift of focus of emphases and the choice of teaching methods and strategies. Secondly, as the students’ explicit grammatical knowledge cannot be well transformed into their implicit knowledge, teachers should focus their attention on the output of grammatical points in class and try to create more opportunities for students to do oral exercises. Besides, students should expose themselves frequently to English original works in their spare time so as to speed up the internalization. Lastly, asboth explicit and implicit grammatical competencies strongly correlate to students’ English proficiency, implicit instruction cannot be ignored while great importance is attached to explicit teaching.