Effects Of Sentence Imitation On Learning Of Passive Voice With Modal Verbs By Chinese Middle School Students

This study was undertaken to investigate the effects of sentence imitation on learning of passive voice(PV)with modal verbs(MV).The theories on which this study was based were input hypothesis,output hypothesis,memetics and constructivist theory.The significance of this study was to explore a new type of implicit grammar instruction different from the explicit instruction,to help students take the initiative to find out the rules of grammar so as to grasp the grammar,and to improve their learning interest and class efficiency.The research questions to be addressed in this study are as follow:1.Which was more effective in learning of passive voice with modal verbs in the immediate test,sentence imitation or explicit instruction?2.Which was more effective in learning of passive voice with modal verbs in the delayed test,sentence imitation or explicit instruction?3.Which had higher retention rate in learning of passive voice with modal verbs,sentence imitation or explicit instruction?Altogether 105 students from two parallel classes of Junior Three of a middle school in Baotou city,participated in this study with 52 students in one class and 53 in the other.Before the experiment,a pretest was conducted to find out that there was no significant difference between the two classes.The two parallel classes were taught by the same English teacher.The treatment involved changing the sentences into passive voice after the model and connecting the words into sentences after the model.The instrument included two tests designed by the researcher herself:an immediate test and a delayed test taken two weeks later.The test format was similar,including multiple choices,blanks filling,sentence transformation,and translation,totaling 50 points.Data were collected by the researcher and the English teacher.The following students were excluded from calculation,including those who had learnt PV with MV in their extra English classes after school;those whose scores ranged beyond 34 to 46 to make sure that there was no significant difference between subjects and to avoid extreme scores;those who took the immediate test without taking the delayed one or who took the delayed test,but absent in the immediate one;those whose scores in the delayed test were higher than that in the immediate test.The valid number of participants was 49.Data analysis involved three steps:scoring,independent sample t-test and calculating the retention rate of learning of PV with MV.They were employed to compare the effects of sentence imitation on learning of PV with MV.The major three findings of this study were as follow:Firstly,there was a significant difference between the sentence imitation class and the explicit instruction class in immediate test with their mean 37.47 and 43.21 respectively.The reason might be that the explicit instruction class took more time,made more efforts and got more guidance from their teacher than the sentence imitation class.Secondly,both sentence imitation and explicit instruction had effects on learning PV with MV,which indicated that not all the grammar knowledge learning should be confined to teachers' instruction,and that the students' self-learning guided by teachers was also recommended.This might be attributed to comprehensible input and comprehensible output,which contributed to calling learners'attention to the rules of grammar knowledge.Thirdly,there was a significant difference between the two classes in the delayed test.The explicit instruction class did better than the sentence imitation class with their retention rate 96.23%and 94.53%respectively.The study had three limitations.One was that the number of samples employed in this study might not be large enough to be generalizable to other samples.Another was that this study was limited to effects of the sentence imitation on learning of PV with MV.The effects might vary with various learning types.Future researches should include other types of learning,such as dictation and writing a summary,etc.or aiming at other grammar points,for example,English relative clause,articles,etc.The other was that the whole experiment lasted three weeks,which could not guarantee its long-term effects on learning of PV with MV.More longitudinal studies would be needed to research long-term effects of learning of PV with MV.