An Action Research On The Application Of Situational Teaching Method To English Grammar Teaching In Rural Junior Schools

Grammar is an important part of language knowledge.Learning grammar well is helpful to improve language competence.The New English Curriculum Standard clearly points out that English grammar teaching should be combined with students’ actual situations and let students experience the ideographic function of language in practice.However,in the practical English grammar teaching in rural junior schools,English grammar teaching is still dominated by teachers.Teachers pay attention to grammar rules strictly and students drill grammar knowledge mechanically but neglect language usage.Therefore,it’s particularly necessary to explore some effective teaching strategies of grammar teaching in rural junior schools.Situational teaching method combines with students’ real life.Students can participate,experience and apply grammar knowledge in situations.Based on the theory of Situational Cognition and Input Hypothesis,situational teaching method is applied to grammar teaching in rural junior schools in this study.Through creating situations,students can observe grammatical phenomenon,explore grammatical structure,consolidate grammatical rules and use grammatical knowledge in situations teaching.Action research is carried out in this study,creating authentic situations,social situations and topical situations respectively through pictures,games and stories.This study attempts to explore the following questions(1)What kind of situations can improve the effectiveness of grammar teaching in rural junior schools?(2).How can situations be created to improve the effectiveness of grammar teaching in rural junior schools?In order to answer the two research questions,tests,teaching journals and interviews are applied as research instruments and 39 students from a nature class of a rural junior school in PaiTan town,ZengCheng district,Guangzhou city are employed as research participants to conduct a 16-week action research.Each cycle of action research respectively studies and compares the achievement of grammar teaching in authentic situations,social situations and topical situations.The data obtained from this study is analyzed and processed by percentage and SPSS18.0.The results of this study indicate that: authentic situations can mostly improve the effectiveness of grammar teaching in rural junior schools.Using stories to create situations can best improve the effectiveness of grammar teaching in rural junior schools.The implications from this study are that teachers should update their concept of grammar teaching,design situations that conform to students’ real life,and situation teaching should comply with students’ development and cognitive level.Besides,the author reflects the limitations of this study.Due to limited research experience of the researchers,limited research time and limitations of research samples,some deficiencies still exit in this study.Finally,the author puts forward some suggestions on the application of situational teaching method to grammar teaching in rural junior schools based on this study.