A Study On The Application Of PACE Grammar Model To English Grammar Teaching In Senior High School

A learner’s foundation of English,to a large extent,depends on grammar.Generally speaking,Chinese students’ English learning still heavily relies on classroom and many of them are weak in grammar learning.That is because English is not widely used in China.Therefore,it is of great significance for teachers to explore a better grammar teaching model suitable for Chinese students.However,traditional grammar models overemphasize grammatical form,which ignore the concrete context,aim of communication and language use.Communicative approach focuses on learners’ communicative language ability and language fluency,while ignoring the accuracy in the language.PACE grammar model,as a kind of integrated teaching method,not only focuses on grammatical form,but also on learners’ communicative language ability.It has four steps in teaching,as the abbreviation of the name(PACE)indicated: Presentation,Attention,Co-construction and Extension,which is supposed to be more suitable for Chinese learners.This study,theoretically based on Van Lier’s Authenticity and the Whole Language Theory,tries to prove the effectiveness of this model via an teaching experiment.The research revolves around three questions:1.To what degree will the application of PACE grammar model affect students’ grammar learning interest?2.To what degree will the application of PACE grammar model affect students’ grammar learning result?3.Compared with the traditional grammar teaching model,PPP grammar model,what are the advantages of PACE grammar model?The author conducted an teaching experiment in a certain senior high school in Dalian,with 87 participants,in 2 classes of grade 2.Class 9 is the experimental class(EC),while class 10 is the control class(CC).The teaching experiment lasted for 4 months.Firstly,pre-test was given to the two classes,so as to find out the participants’ mastery of grammar item-subjunctive mood.Then,subjunctive mood was selected as part of the teaching content in the experiment.During the experiment,experimental class adopted PACE grammar model,while traditional grammar model was applied in control class.After the experiment,tests,questionnaires and interview were administered one by one,and the data were collected and analyzed via SPSS 19.0.The results indicate that after the application of PACE grammar mode,it has not only improved students’ English grammar learning results,but also aroused students’ interest in grammar learning.This study implies that teachers ought to select more authentic materials so as to stimulate students’ interest.What’s more,teachers need to pay more attention to co-construction of grammar rules in teaching,which is useful to mobilize students’ initiative.