The Effect Of Construction-Oriented Grammar Teaching On High School Students' Learning Of Subjunctive Mood Of Counterfactual If Clauses

Guided by construction grammar and based on the specific constructions,the teacher helps students to summarize subjunctive mood of counterfactual if clauses schema constructions,and acquires corresponding grammatical knowledge.The main teaching points include:(1)According to different categories,a large number of construction instances are presented,then teacher guides students to observe the differences between conditional sentences and similar sentences they have learned,so they can summarize the construction forms of specific clauses and main clauses.(2)Teacher guides students to focus on the form changes of predicate verbs,deduce their respective schema constructions,so they can further understand the corresponding specific constructions.(3)Teacher guides students to explore the relationship between the respective embodiment of subjunctive mood of counterfactual if clauses constructions and perceptual experience.(4)Teacher guides students to summarize the respective relations between three kinds of subjunctive mood schema constructions,and finally conclude the general form of the subjunctive mood of counterfactual if clauses.This study seeks to investigate the possible effects that the construction-oriented teaching may produce on high school students' acquisition of English subjunctive mood of counterfactual if clauses.Specifically,the study attempts to address three major questions:What are the effects of construction-oriented teaching on high school students' acquisition of subjunctive mood of present counterfactual if clause?(2)What are the effects of construction-oriented teaching on high school students' acquisition of subjunctive mood of past counterfactual if clause?(3)What are the effects of construction-oriented teaching on high school students' acquisition of subjunctive mood of future counterfactual if clause?In order to find out the answers to the above three questions,the study employs quantitative and qualitative research methods.The quantitative research is conducted by designing the test of subjunctive mood of counterfactual if clauses construction.The subjects of this research,78 Grade 2 students in Zibo city,include 39 students in control class and 39 students in experimental class.The pretest manifests that there is no significant difference in their English grades between EC and CC before the experiment.In the EC,the study adopts the construction-grammar-guided teaching.While in the CC,the target sentences are taught under the guidance of traditional method.After the teaching experiment,the students of two classes are post tested,the test of which focuses on the subjunctive mood of counterfactual if clauses construction,to be exact,subjunctive mood of present counterfactual if clause test,subjunctive mood of past counterfactual if clause test and subjunctive mood of future counterfactual if clause test.Afterwards,the data collected are processed by SPSS,the results of which are well-prepared for further discussion.The qualitative research is conducted in the form of interview and questionnaire.Six interviewees are chosen from the EC,involving 2 high achievers,2 medium achievers and 2 low achievers.The whole interview process is recorded and transcribed for further analysis.The students in the EC filled the questionnaire before and after the experiment.The test results are processed by Independent Sample,which shows that the average score of the experimental class is higher than that of the control class in three kinds of tests.The statistics of Independent Samples T Test in the posttest 1 shows P<0.001(P<0.05);and Independent Samples T Test in the posttest 2 shows P<0.001(P<0.05);the statistics of Independent Samples T Test in the posttest 3 shows P<0.001(P<0.05).The major findings of the present study are as follows:(1)The construction-oriented teaching has a positive effect on students' acquisition of subjunctive mood of present counterfactual if clause.(2)The construction-oriented teaching has a positive effect on students' acquisition of subjunctive mood of past counterfactual if clause.(3)The construction-oriented teaching has a positive effect on students' acquisition of subjunctive mood of future counterfactual if clause.And the results of the interview and questionnaire are,to some degree,in support of these findings.The implications of the study are that:1)Teachers should pay attention to form and meaning pair in the subjunctive mood construction.2)Teachers should guide students to learn the subjunctive mood from concrete construction to schematic construction then concrete construction.3)Teachers should help students to build good grammar learning habits instead of just letting them remember grammar rules.Finally,the study still has some limitations such as the limited sample size,the test design and other uncontrollable factors,etc.Therefore,the study requires further improvement.