An Empirical Study Of Three Dimensional Grammar Teaching In English Classroom Of Senior High School

Grammar is an important and necessary part of English teaching. However, after iterations of various English grammar teaching methods, traditional grammar teaching method still occupies the mainstream position in the background of examination-oriented education system.Larsen-Freeman(1991) proposes three dimensional grammar approach, which emphasizes form, meaning and use of language. Her concept of “grammaring” is not only perfectly in line with the New English Curriculum(2012) for students in senior high school, but also meets the needs of comprehensive language use ability in the reform of National Matriculation of English Test(NMET).Under the background of above situations, an empirical study is carried out to examine whether three dimensional grammar teaching is more effective than traditional grammar teaching in improving students’ English performance, and what are students’ attitudes toward English grammar learning and three dimensional grammar teaching. Three instruments were adopted in the study: tests(pre-test and post-test), questionnaire and interviews. And, subjunctive mood in the first and second unit of New Senior English for China(NSEFC) published by People’s Education Press is selected as the experimental grammar point. The experimental time is three weeks, and the whole experiment is divided into three phases: first, two parallel classes of senior high school in Shangrao, Jiangxi were randomly chosen as the experimental group and the controlled group. A pre-test was conducted in the two groups in the same conditions. Second, in one week’s grammar teaching experiment, the controlled group adopted traditional grammar teaching method, while the experimental group adopted the three-dimensional grammar teaching method. A questionnaire investigation and interviews were conducted just after the teaching experiment. Third, a week after the experiment, a post-test was held under the same conditions in the two groups. The experimental results were analyzed by SPSS22 statistical software.The major findings can be summarized as follows: 1) the scores of the experimental class and the controlled class in the post test were significantly different(Sig.(2-tailed) =0.000<0.05), which proves that three dimensional grammar teaching is more effective than traditional grammar teaching in improving students’ English performance; 2) students prefer three dimensional grammar teaching than traditional grammar teaching because it can not only improve their scores in NMET, but also cultivate their comprehensive language use ability; 3) most of the students still agree that grammar learning is very important for NMET.This research has some implications for English grammar teaching in senior high school. Under the background of new reform of NMET, English grammar teaching in senior high school should change accordingly, and the three-dimensional grammar teaching can help provide effective environment in classroom grammar teaching.