Action Research On Topic-Directed And Integrated Input Enhancement In English Teaching For Lexico-Grammar Skills In Junior Middle School

Vocabulary and grammar is the foundation of language learning that involves lexical resources and the rules of joining words and making sentences,which is indispensable to language learning,but difficult to the Grade-Nine students in their final key stage of junior English study as they stayed below the average level in education.The students had weak vocabulary foundation,poor grammatical knowledge and low interest in English learning,in addition,poor learning habits.Therefore,how to have an effective and holistic revision of English lessons they learned in junior middle school in limited time was a matter of common concern among teachers and students.This research was aimed to solve students’ problems with English learning in vocabulary and grammar during the revision.Under the theories of Input Enhancement and the Three Dimensions of Language,this three-month action research was conducted in vocabulary and grammar teaching with different topical theme by input enhancement to improve the learning status of Grade-Nine junior middle school students’ linguistic skills in vocabulary and grammar and sentence writing,and to raise their grammar awareness as well.Thus,with a focus on three language aspects: grammar,vocabulary and sentence-composition structure,the research started with these questions:(1)Have students improved their grammar and vocabulary skills through topic-directed and integrated lexico-grammar learning under the principle of input-enhancement?(2)If the answer is positive,then what are the changes manifested in terms of the students’ vocabulary,grammar and sentence writing? How are all these achieved?During the teaching process of carrying out the action plan,the author had constant reflection to adjust and improve the teaching,hence achieving both the teaching and research objectives.The findings of this research have showed that students enjoyed English learning and their vocabulary and grammar accumulation increased by means of the topic-based input enhancement.Most students had a clearer grammar knowledge and began to have grammar awareness after the topic-based textual enhancement and structured input.The accuracy of sentence writing was improved by the most students,especially for those better at English,whose expressions were various and the organization of their compositions were more logical than before.The implications of the research are as follows: students’ need should always be considered in the teaching.Teachers should provide students enough comprehensible input in context and enhance these input in different methods so that it is helpful to develop the students’ language abilities.