Integration Of Explicit And Implicit Grammar Instruction In Junior High School

There are several instructions in the English grammar teaching, and explicit grammar instruction and implicit grammar instruction are two representative instructions. These two grammar instructions are not mutually independent or exclusive, but they are complementary and promote each other. In the explicit instruction process, English teachers explain grammatical rules, and students are given more opportunities to learn language forms and some grammatical rules while the teacher will always ignore the practicing of the grammar in communicative contexts.However, in the implicit instruction process, students have a better chance to practice in a communicative context, but they ignore the learning of grammatical rules. Thus, the author integrates explicit instruction with implicit instruction together in actual teaching, and applies it in the junior English class in order to find out if the integration of explicit and implicit instruction can help students in their grammar learning. The two hypotheses are addressed: 1) Students' grammar scores can be improved more effectively by the integration of explicit and implicit instruction than by the explicit grammar instruction. 2) The integration of explicit and implicit instruction can help students develop good learning habits, enhance the students' interest and help them build up confidence in learning English grammar.Based on the theories as Krashen's Acquisition-learning Hypothesis,Schmidit's Noticing Hypothesis, and the Interface Position, and with the methods of experiment and survey, the author tries to integrate explicit instruction and implicit instruction in actual teaching. The author conducts an English proficiency test in pretest, and then selects 80 students from two classes in ninth-grade of junior high school. Integrative grammar instruction is used in the Class 1, and explicit grammar instruction is adopted in Class 2. The author makes a two-month teaching practice and then tests two classes again in post-test. At last, the data of the two tests of two classes is analyzed by using SPSS(17.0).According to the data analysis and the results of the questionnaire,the scores of Class 1 are higher than that of Class 2 from the overall scores. The results show that the integration of explicit and implicit instruction is more effective on the students' grammar scores than the explicit instruction. It also shows that the integration of explicit and implicit instruction can help cultivate students' good learning habits,enhance the interest in learning grammar rules and build up confidence in learning English.