A Study On The Application Of Story-Based Approach To The English Tense Teaching In Rural Primary Schools

When it comes to English learning,grammar is of great importance since it can help learners learn the language more effectively.In the English grammar system,English tenses are vital since having a good acquisition of English tenses is the basis of learning English well,especially for beginners.However,primary school students usually haven’t developed a good cognitive ability which can affect how well they understand the abstract concept,and their age characteristics indicate that their attention span is limited.As a result,it is difficult to carry out English tenses teaching among primary school students.Traditional teaching method(Grammar Translation Method)focuses on students memorizing large numbers of grammar rules,which is irrelevant to students’ daily life.Besides,in the teaching process,students hardly participate in the class,which discourages their interests in the English learning.Therefore,traditional approach can’t achieve a satisfying teaching effect.This research aims to investigate the effect of Story-Based Approach on English tenses teaching in rural primary schools.The research questions include:(1)How does the Story-Based Approach affect the acquisition of English tenses for rural primary school students in general?(2)How does the Story-Based Approach affect the acquisition of each of the four English tense for rural primary school students?(3)How does the Story-Based Approach affect the acquisition of four English tenses between high level and low level rural primary school students respectively?The subjects of this study are students of two parallel 6th grade classes from a rural primary school in Lianyungang.Totally,123 students were recruited in the study,including 62 in the Experiment Class(EC),and 61 in the Control Class(CC).This research chose one class as EC and another as CC randomly.EC learned the English tenses via Story-Based Approach,while CC learned them through traditional teaching method.The study lasted for two months with two classes in a week and one tense for every two weeks.Totally four English tenses were taught:the simple present tense,the simple past tense,the present continuous tense and the simple future tense.The research tools were paper tests and interviews.In order to test whether there is a significant difference between the two classes in terms of students’tense acquisition,students in the two classes were given a pre-test before the study.In order to understand the students’acquisition of tenses after two months,there was a post-test after the last class.In order to understand students’opinions on the Story-Based Approach,12 students were randomly selected for an interview after the experiment.The papers of the two tests are jointly designed by the author and a number of front-line teachers to ensure that the difficulty is moderate and in line with students’level.The study found that compared to the traditional teaching method,Story-Based Approach can achieve a better teaching result in English tense teaching in rural primary schools.According to the results of the pre-test,there is no significant difference in the mastery of the four English tenses among students between EC and CC.According to the results of post-test,students’acquisition of the four English tenses can be significantly improved by both the Story-Based Approach and the traditional teaching method.However,the average score of the EC was higher than that of CC,and the p value was smaller than.01,indicating that there is a significant difference in the mastery of the four English tenses between EC and CC after two months.This shows that Story-Based Approach is more effective in terms of teaching English tenses in rural primary schools.In addition,as to whether the Story-Based Approach affects the acquisition of each of the four English tenses,results suggested that the Story-Based Approach can significantly improve students’acquisition of each of the four English tenses among rural primary students with p<.01 for simple present tense,present continuous tense,simple future tense and simple past tense.Finally,as for students of high and low levels,the Story-Based Approach can significantly improve the acquisition of the four English tenses for both levels(p<.01 for high level students,p<.01 for low level students).It’s interesting to see that the Story-Based Approach was also very suitable for students in the low level group.Although the scores of students in the low level group can’t be compared with those in the high level group,since the gap was too large,the Story-Based Approach gave low level students a chance to narrow the gap.This study has some implications for English teaching in rural primary schools.First of all,when teaching English to rural primary schools students,teachers should try to create a situation that is related to students’life,rather than saying too many abstract concepts,and requiring students to memorize large numbers of grammar rules,which will discourage students’enthusiasm.Secondly,when using Story-Based Approach,teachers must have a strong ability to well organize the teaching process and organize student’s activities.Only in this way,can they optimize the teaching effect.Finally,teachers should allocate groups reasonably.Active and less active students should be equally divided into one group and made to help each other.Less active students should also be encouraged to participate in more activities,because these can increase their senses of participation and improve their confidence,which are conducive to students’ future learning.