The Effects Of Frequency On Learning Attributive Clause For Secondary Vocational School Students

Foreign language researchers have almost never stopped arguing about the status and function of grammar teaching.They once revered it or abandoned it.But now they have returned to rationality.Cheng Xiaotang(2013)pointed out,"the issue of grammar teaching is not a question of whether to teach grammar,but what kind of grammar and how to teach grammar." The status quo of English teaching in secondary vocational schools is less optimistic,which is in urgent need of change,no matter for entering a higher school or from the perspective of career development.And the weakest grammar learning of secondary vocational students is the entry point for this change.As for the frequency effect,although many scholars both at home and abroad have affirmed their important role in second language acquisition,there are still many controversies,which exactly illustrate the complexity of frequency effects.This study explores the impact of frequency effects on learning Attributive Clause from the perspective of use,and tries to find out the following questions:(1)What is the effect of frequency on the improvement of secondary vocational students’explicit knowledge of Attributive Clause(reflected by multiple choice),implicit knowledge(reflected by reading comprehension)and ability to use it(reflected by writing composition)?(2)What are the differences in the effects of different types of frequencies on the secondary vocational students’ learning of Attributive Clause(e.g.between explicit frequency and implicit frequency,between input frequency and output frequency)?(3)How to design learning tasks so that the function of frequency effect can be played better,so as to improve the ability of secondary vocational school students to learn Attributive Clause?Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect and analyze the data.The target language item was the Attributive Clause.The experiment was divided into three small experiments and implemented in stages.Thirty-six sophomore computer majors were divided into two groups,A and B,with different exercise tasks.Each exercise lasted 40 minutes and each phase lasted four weeks.In experiment one,the tasks of two groups were separately multiple choice and reading comprehension.In experiment two,the tasks were sentences translation for group A and essays reading for group B.In experiment three,group A were to finish choice,reading,essay,translation,and group B were to play games,sing songs,dub for movies and put on playlet.After the last exercise of each experiment,a post-experiment test was conducted.Through the above research,the following main findings are obtained:(1)The increase of practice frequency has a significant role in promoting secondary vocational students’ mastering of the explicit knowledge,implicit knowledge of the Attributive Clause as well as the ability of using it.But only when the frequency increases to a certain number of times will statistical differences be produced.In addition,when the frequency increases to a certain number,the improvement becomes slow and the progress is no longer obvious.(2)The increase of different types of task frequency has different effects on the learning of Attributive Clause.Explicit frequency and implicit frequency can both effectively improve students’ learning of Attributive Clause,but the frequency of implicit tasks required for statistical difference is different from the explicit ones.The increase of input frequency is conducive to the acquisition of implicit knowledge,and increases the number of Attributive Clauses in composition.The main advantage of increasing output frequency is embodied in improving the accuracy of language.(3)When designing learning tasks,we should adopt different exercise forms and different exercise frequencies according to different teaching aims,follow the principle of diversity,and choose as many active learning tasks as possible,so as to mobilize the learning enthusiasm of secondary vocational students more effectively and let the frequency effect better play its positive role.Based on the above conclusions,the researcher has obtained some enlightenment on the teaching of English grammar.First of all,as a secondary English teacher,we should make full use of the frequency effect,reasonably design the classroom teaching plan and after-school practice,and appropriately increase the practice frequency of the target grammar so as to promote English grammar learning in secondary vocational schools.But at the same time,attention should be paid to the control of the number of exercises.Excessive practice is easy to cause mental fatigue or boredom among students,which is not conducive to their learning.Second,for different teaching purposes,different tasks should be adopted accordingly,with quality and quantity guaranteed.We should also pay attention to the combination of explicit and implicit frequency,input and output frequency so as to ensure the common growth of students’ explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge and enhance the fluency and accuracy when expressed in the target grammar.In addition,the diversity of tasks should be ensured and active learning tasks ought to be used as much as possible,so that the positive role of frequency effect can be better played.