An Empirical Study Of The Application Of Backward Design To The Instruction Of Non-finite English Verbs In Senior High Schools

This research concentrates on how backward design influences the instruction in non-finite English verbs for Senior High School students.Backward design is a teaching design model which firstly identifies the desired results,and then determines acceptable evidences for the expected results and finally plans learning experience and instructions.It emphasizes that having a clear goal can help us to focus on the planning and to guide purposeful actions toward the intended results.In the past 18 years,scholars at home and abroad have conducted a number of studies on the effects of backward design on the acquisition of various subjects,while the acquisition of non-finite English verbs hasn't been paid much attention to.Based on Wiggins and McTighe's UbD theory and Piaget'Constructivism theory,this thesis addresses the following two questions:1)What effects can backward design have on Senior High School students' acquisition of non-finite English verbs?2)What effects can backward design have on Senior High Students' motivation for non-finite English acquisition?Students from three intact classes in a senior high school participated in an experiment which lasted for thirteen weeks.Class 125,one of thethree classes was assigned to the experimental class,while Class 122 and Class 123,the other two classes,were assigned to the controlled ones.Before the instructional experiment began,a test was carried out to explore how well the subjects from the three classes could use non-finite English verbs.In the teaching experiment,subjects got access to two different kinds of instructions: the instruction based on backward design and the instruction based on traditional designs.We collected the intended data through grammar tests and two questionnaires,and then analyzed those data by utilizing Reliability Analysis,the IndependentSamples T-Test,Paired-Samples T-Test,Factor Analysis and Linear Regression Analysis.All these analyses were completed with the assistance of SPSS 21.0.Major findings are as follows:1)Backward design has a positive influence on improving students' uses of non-finite English verbs.For one thing,the instruction based on backward design can contribute to students' understanding of syntactic rules;for another,it can help students achieve the fundamental understanding of the uses of non-finite English verbs.Only by further understanding of grammar can students flexibly apply it to daily communication,to writing,and to sentence analysis or discourse analysis.2)After a 13-week teaching experiment,the subjects from the experimental class have improved their learning motivation.Their extrinsic motivations and their task values have increased significantly,while there is no significant difference in their intrinsic motivations.What's more,their test anxieties have decreased to a significant level.So the instruction based on backward design can improve Senior High School students' learning motivation for the acquisition of non-finite English verbs.The results of the Linear Regression Analysis show that there is significant linear relationship between learning motivation and their acquisition of non-finite English verbs.Compared with previous studies,the innovation of the thesis lies in the first application of backward design in the instruction in non-finite English verbs.And it tests the study findings with both qualitative and quantitative analyses.However,the thesis has certain limitations because the limited data are only from the grade-two students in a Senior High School and the majority of the subjects are weak in English.Future studies should optimize the participants,and enlarge the number of subjects so as to enlarge the application field of backward design.