The Effect Of Construction-oriented Grammar Teaching On Junior High School Students’ Learning Of Dative Construction

English ditransitive constructions can be separated into two kinds,which are dative constructions and double object constructions.The latter is used more frequently by Chinese students and it is also one of the grammar knowledge taught in junior high school.However,the grammar teaching has focused on the grammatical form and rules for a long time,achieving little pedagogical effect,which also exists in the dative construction learning.These years,many pieces of research have shown that teaching research guided by construction grammar can provide a new perspective for the study of second language acquisition.In this way,the grammar teaching method can be changed to a certain extent,that is,from the teaching which emphasizes formal structure to the teaching that emphasizes both form and meaning.The purpose of this study is to explore the possible effect of the proposed construction-oriented grammar teaching on junior high school students’ learning of English dative construction.Specifically,the present study attempts to answer the following three research questions:(1)What is the effect of construction-oriented teaching on junior high school students’ learning of actual-transfer construction?(2)What is the effect of construction-oriented teaching on junior high school students’ learning of potential-transfer construction?(3)What is the effect of construction-oriented teaching on junior high school students’learning of zero-transfer construction?This study mainly adopts a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods.The subjects are selected from the second grade of a middle school in Zhen Jiang.In the quantitative study,Class 7 is selected as the control class,and Class 8 is selected as the experimental class,with 50 students in both classes.The control class still adopts the traditional teaching method,but the experimental class adopts the new teaching method.Both classes take part in the pretest and post-tests.The pretest consists of 20 Y/N questions and the post-tests are made up of multiple choices and translation exercises.The test data is processed by SPSS,including independent sample T test.Qualitative research is conducted in the form of interviews.The six interviewees are students from the EC that represents three levels of junior high school.The author records the entire interview process and turns it into text for further analysis.Main findings of the research are illustrated as follows:1)It can be learned from the research that there is no significant difference between the traditional grammar teaching and the construction grammar teaching in terms of the actual-transfer dative construction.The mean scores of the two classes are similar,with the one of the CC a little lower.But p>0.05,which shows that there is no significant difference.Nevertheless,the interview finds that the students under the construction-oriented teaching method have a stronger ability of generalization and memory.Besides,they are more interested in learning grammar.2)The research proves that the new teaching method has a significantly positive effect on students’ learning of the potential-transfer dative constructions.The EC students make full use of their cognitive competence and imagination through the metaphor and the image schema.Therefore,they can benefit from the new learning approach compared with the mechanical learning.3)The construction-oriented teaching also promotes students’ learning of the zero-transfer dative construction significantly.Students from EC learn the grammar more thoroughly by combining the structure and meaning together so that they can deal with some exceptions more actively,which caters to the daily and actual communication.The pedagogical implications are found as follows.1)Teachers ought to focus on the concept of construction grammar-oriented teaching,and gradually introduce this method into second language grammar teaching in junior high school.2)Teachers should attach importance to the learner’s subjective participation and the improvement of language application ability in combination with the traditional teaching method.3)Teachers should help students form good grammar learning habits and change the grammar phenomenon of memorizing grammar by rote.Finally,there are some limitations in this study such as the limited sample size,the limited learning and testing time,and interference due to other uncontrollable factors.Therefore,this study needs improvement in further studies.