The Effects Of Mental Space-time Model Based Teaching Approach On Middle School Students' English Tense Learning

This study aims to investigate the influence of mental space-time model based teaching approach on middle school students' English tenses learning.The research addresses the following questions:(1)Does the teaching approach based on the mental space-time model influence middle school students' acquisition of English tenses?(2)Compared with the traditional teaching approach,does the mental space-time model based teaching approach produce different impacts on the acquisition of English tenses by middle school students?This research employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods.Quantitative research mainly involves the teaching of English tense and data collected from tense tests at two different stages of the experiment,while qualitative method was used to collect and analyze students'feedbacks about the new teaching approach.The subjects were 60 Grade 8 students from Rugao Foreign Language School,including 30 students in the experimental class(EC)and 30 in the control class(CC).According to the pretest,there was no significant difference between the EC and the CC in the overall level of English verb tense application.Meanwhile,the degree of polarization of English tense mastery in each class was basically the same.The EC adopts the teaching approach based on mental space-time model,and the control class adopts the regular teaching method.After a six-week teaching experiment,a post-test was conducted to check the effects of different teaching approaches on students' acquisition of English tense.Moreover,feedbacks about the new teaching approach from the EC were also collected and analyzed.The major findings of this study are as follows:(1)The research manifests that applying mental space-time model theory to the teaching of English tense in Grade 8 students has a positive effect on improving their English verb tense usage.The results of the post-test of the experimental class showed that not only the average level was significantly higher than that of the pretest,but also the degree of polarization was effectively controlled,and to a considerable extent it was better than the control class;(2)Compared with traditional verb tense teaching approach,the one based on mental space-time model can help students better improve the the usage of English verb tense;(3)According to the feedback of the students,it is clear that the teaching approach based on mental space-time model can explain the complex language phenomena that can not be explained by the conventional teaching methods.It can also promote the teachers to actively carry out teaching research and explore better teaching methods.Given the above observations,we can conclude that the study and application of mental space-time model exerts a positive impact on students' English tense learning and teachers'teaching.As compared with other linguistic theories,cognitive linguistic theories such as mental space-time model may provide a more convincing and comprehensive explanation of the nature and structure of language(Tyler,2012).Therefore,the application of such cognitive linguistic theories as mental space-time model may broaden the horizontal of foreign language teachers and blaze a novel trail for foreign language teaching.