An Experimental Study On The Teaching Of Senior High School English Attributive Clause Guided By The Figure/Ground Theory

For a long time, the teaching of attributive clause has adopted the traditional teaching approaches. Teachers explain the structure, meaning and key and difficult points, and then a lot of exercises are drilled by students to enhance this English grammar. However, many students cannot master this grammar after doing a lot of exercises. Thus, how to make students fully and effectively learn and acquire attributive clause is a very important issue to be resolved.In recently years, cognitive linguistics is developing rapidly, and it as well provides a new perspective for attributive clause teaching. Langacker(1987) claims that Figure/Ground structure is the basic characteristics of cognitive function. The application of Figure/Ground Theory to linguistics provides the unsolved issue above with a new idea. Guided by the Figure/Ground Theory, a new teaching method was adopted, to instruct attributive clause teaching and learning in this study.In order to test the effectiveness of the application of the Figure/Ground Theory to senior high attributive clause teaching, both quantitative and qualitative research methods are adopted. 102 senior high students of grade two were selected and equally divided them into two classes, namely, the control class(CC) and the experimental class(EC), with CC using traditional teaching approach and EC using Figure/Ground Theory method respectively. A contrasting experiment was made between the two classes. In the whole experiment process,a pre-test, the teaching procedures, a post-test and a questionnaire were performed. The data of test papers were analyzed by a statistical software SPSS22.0, and the results show that Figure/Ground Theory teaching method can be applied to senior high attributive clause teaching. Its application can help students better comprehend, use and grasp attributive clause.Meanwhile, its application can make students English grammar learning more interesting,which is helpful to motivate students’ learning motivation and interest.This study tests the effectiveness of applying Figure/Ground Theory to senior high attributive clause teaching. Its application not only provides a new teaching method for teachers but also provides students with a new way of learning attributive clause. Besides, itcultivates the students’ independent thinking ability, improves their performance and builds a more relaxing and pleasant classroom atmosphere for them as well.