A Study On The Effectiveness Of Flipped Learning In Middle School English Grammar Instruction

National English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education（2011）mandates that the goals of English teaching are to cultivate students’basic comprehensive language competence,promote their mental development and enrich their humanistic quality via English learning.Language skills and language knowledge are the foundation of the comprehensive competence to use language with grammar being a critical part of language knowledge.Under the new National English Curriculum Standards,grammar instruction should not be synonymous with mechanical grammar delivery;instead,it should integrate language form,content and communicative functions.By means of various learning activities,grammar instruction facilitates students’efforts in autonomous learning and cooperative learning through which grammar rules are internalized and mastered,and language competence is enhanced.Flipped Learning is a new pedagogical approach that integrates course content with technology.In recent years,it has gained credence because of its successful practice in USA,Turkey and other parts of the world.The present research attempts to apply the flipped learning model to middle school English grammar instruction in the hope that it may offer some solutions to a deep-rooted educational problem:teaching is usually centered on knowledge delivery but unable to cultivate students’competence.This thesis attempts to test the effectiveness of flipped learning in Middle School English grammar instruction,trying to seek answers to the following three questions:1.What effects does flipped learning have on learner autonomy in grammar learning?2.What effects does flipped learning have on the grammatical competence and performance of students in the flipped classroom?3.To what extent does flipped learning have effects on grammatical competence and performance of students across different learning styles?In line with the above questions,it is hypothesized that flipped learning can enhance learner autonomy in grammar learning,have positive effects on students’grammatical competence and performance and be applicable for students across different learning styles.For the purpose of testing theses hypotheses,a four-month teaching experiment was conducted in NO.4 Junior High School in Anqing City.110 8^th graders joined the flipped learning experiment in two classes:the experimental class and the control class.Questionnaires,interviews and tests were used to collect relevant data.The results of the research indicate:Firstly,flipped learning is effective in improving students’learner autonomy for grammar,but shows less significant effects in areas of planning and evaluating.Secondly,compared with the traditional class,flipped learning can enhance students’grammatical performance in speaking and writing but does not show significance in improving students’test scores.Thirdly,flipped learning can enhance learner autonomy across different learning styles and promote students‘grammatical competence and performance,but the effectiveness varies among students with different learning styles in different learning activities.This flipped learning experiment has provided the following implications for English grammar instruction in middle schools.First,under the guidelines of the New English Curriculum Standards,teachers and students should use the flipped learning model to advance reforms in teaching ideas,teaching procedure,teaching methods and evaluation thus realizing high efficiency in teaching and learning;second,flipped learning needs to be personalized for precise grammar instruction in language input,output and feedback;third,middle schools should strengthen learning strategy instruction to enhance students’autonomous learning capacity under the flipped learning model.