On Grammar Instruction In Compulsory Education Period From The Perspective Of Instructed Second Language Acquisition

The research of Second Language Acquisition is committed to exploring the essence and cognitive process of second language acquisition.In the past two to three decades,driven by social needs,the research on second / foreign language acquisition in the intructional context has developed rapidly.On the basis of a large number of theoretical and empirical researches,Instructed Second Language Acquisition(ISLA)has gradually developed into an important branch of Second Language Acquisition research.This research field seeks effective interventions to aid L2 learning and explores the ways in which factors inside and outside the classroom affect second language acquisition in instructional context and the relationship between them.English teaching in China has the typical characteristics of ISLA.In view of this,this study takes ISLA as theoretical perspective and the simple past tense as an example to systematically analyze the impact of internal and external factors in English teaching context,such as English curriculum standards,textbook,classroom teaching and teachers’ cognition on grammar teaching.The specific research questions are as follows:Question 1: How do English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2011-year Edition)and textbooks define and present grammar teaching objectives?Question 2: What is the current situation of the implementation of English grammar teaching objectives in practice?1)How are the grammar teaching objectives achieved in teaching?2)How do teachers’ beliefs on grammar instruction affect their grammar teaching?3)What is the effect of grammar teaching?Question 3: What are the characteristics of English grammar teaching in compulsory education from the perspective of ISLA?In view of the above research questions,through systematic observation and analysis,this study has the following findings:(1)The English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education puts forward the teaching concept of goal grading and context creation for grammar teaching.The above concepts are realized in English textbooks through the design of topic context,the difficulty and forms of language skills practice and the change of syntactic difficulty.However,the existing curriculum standards lacks the provision for transitional level and the difficulty of corresponding textbooks can not be effectively controlled.(2)Classroom observation shows that teachers are the key factor in teaching,but teachers observed lack context awareness,overemphasize the teaching of grammar knowledge and ignore the cultivation of grammatical competence.There are great differences in grammar teaching methods and contents between junior and senior grades.Teacher interviews show that teachers do not pay enough attention to the curriculum standards and the concept of textbook compilation.Thus the curriculum objectives are difficult to be implemented in teaching.The test of grammatical competence of simple past tense shows that teaching objectives have not been fully achieved.(3)From the perspective ISLA,under the English teaching context in China,grammar teaching is jointly affected by English curriculum standards,textbooks and teachers’ beliefs of grammar teaching.Among them,curriculum standards and textbooks are indirect factors while teachers are direct factors.However,there is a disconnection between different factors,resulting in the inconsistency between curriculum objectives and teaching objectives.Grammar knowledge can not be effectively transformed into grammatical competence.Based on the perspective of ISLA,taking simple past tense as the observation object,this study systematically analyzes the impact of different factors on grammar teaching in China.The findings are of reference significance for improving the effect of grammar teaching in China,and form a useful supplement to the theory and practice of ISLA.