An Empirical Research On The Teaching Of Relative Clauses In Junior Middle School In Constructivist Approach

Currently, teaching grammar as a skill rather than as an area of knowledge has become a consensus in the field of EFL teaching and learning at home and abroad. It is universally acknowledged that this kind of skill is, for an English learner, an indispensable part consisting of English communicative competence. However, through lack of pedagogical content knowledge inherently and insufficience in teaching strategies, most teachers still take grammar as a kind of static knowledge while teaching. Having been widely applied to the teaching of English, constructivism has also been tested on the guidance to grammar teaching in senior schools by many scholars and teachers in China. On the other hand, sufficient attention is still not paid to grammar teaching strategies in junior schools. Traditional teaching pedagogy is consequently a prevailing approach adopted by many English teachers.Based on the situation existing in most of the middle schools in China, the research will take the teaching of Attributive Clauses for example and apply the teaching methods under the guidance of constructivism to practical grammar teaching in Junior middle school. Hereby the research put forward the following three questions:1) Does grammar teaching in Constructivist approach have a better effect than traditional grammar teaching for learning of the relative clause?2) Is the teaching method in Constructivist approach more effective than traditional grammar teaching in consolidating the use of the relative clause ?3) Is the teaching in Constructivist approach more helpful to arouse Junior school students’ interest in learning grammar use?In this thesis, a probe has been conducted into the effectiveness and feasibility of teaching in Constructivist approach to grammar teaching in junior school. The study was carried out in two classes in Junior Two of Guiyang Middle School Attached to Beijing Normal University, involving 66 students and lasting 14 weeks. Constructivism teaching methods were applied in the experimental class whereas traditional teaching methods were adopted in the control class. The combination of qualitative like observation and quantitative designs are used in the thesis. The results of the research demonstrated that the significant differences do exist in the two teaching approaches, that is, the scores of tests in the experimental class are much higher than those in the control class. Results also showed that the way of teaching based on constructivism is much better than the traditional teaching approach in promoting junior students’ grammar competence. And it is obviously beneficial for junior students to be motivated to study grammar and cultivate better habit of thinking in grammar studying. Despite the limitations and defects in this study, it has its practical significance in offering some insights into grammar teaching in junior schools.