An Experimental Study Of Applying Dictogloss In Improving Senior High School Students' English Grammar Competence At Discourse Level

As an essential part of linguistic knowledge, English grammar plays an important part in developing learners' language skills. Therefore, students need not only master grammar knowledge but also be able to deal with pragmatic language problems. Such kind of ability is tested in the University Entrance Examination. However, both of the teachers and the students felt tired and bored in the grammar classes, because most of teachers taught grammar with traditional ways, which focuses on language form.This have resulted in their students' weak grammar competence. To solve this problem, the author tries to adopt a new teaching method-- dictogloss to teach English grammar in senior high school.Dictogloss is a kind of text-based, student-centered teaching activity untaken in groups, which is designed to help learners to pay attention to the language form and meaning, can combine language teaching with students' listening, speaking, reading and writing, and develop learners' ability to accept and output. This study attempts to investigate the effect of dictogloss on students' English grammar learning in senior high school. Therefore, the following two research questions are put forward in this thesis:1) Can dictogloss arouse students' interest in learning English grammar ?2) Can dictogloss improve students' English grammar competence at discourse level?The author conducts an experimental study in two classes of Grade 3 at He Ping Middle School in He Yuan City of Guangdong Province for three months. The subjects are 120 students in two classes whose English proficiency is at the same level and taught by the same teacher. During the experiment, the two classes were taught grammar items in different ways. That is, the teacher taught the students in the experimental class with dictogloss while the teacher taught the students in the controlled class in the traditional way. The authentic and valid data were collected with the instruments of two tests, two questionnaires and an interview and analyzed inboth quantitative and qualitative dimensions.The findings of the research have demonstrated that Dictogloss can arouse students' interest in learning English grammar,and change their attitude to English grammar learning, and that dictogloss can help the students focus on both the meaning and the form of the grammar, and develop students' ability to use grammar structures accurately, meaningfully and appropriately at discourse level.Finally, the major findings are presented and some pedagogical implications for further study are put forward. Meanwhile, the limitations of this study are pointed out one by one.