A Study On The Application Of Data-driven Learning Approach In English Grammar Teaching At Higher Vocational College

Grammar is an indispensable part of English teaching at higher vocational colleges.However,nowadays,many teachers mainly focus on the form and meaning of grammar,yet pay little attention to the context in which grammar is used.As a result,students often fail to use grammatical structures appropriately.In 2021,the Ministry of Education issued the English Curriculum Standards for Higher Vocational Education（2021 Edition）,which pointed out that grammar is the basic rules of language,grammar is the unity of form,meaning and use,directly affect the accuracy and appropriateness of the language comprehension and production.And teachers should also pay attention to the cultivation of students’ language learning strategies in teaching.On the other hand,the main idea of data-driven learning（DDL）is to guide students to observe,analyze and generalize the phenomenon of language use,and to self-discover grammatical rules,meaning expressions and pragmatic features based on a lot of corpus data（Zhen,2005）.Therefore,DDL is highly compatible with the requirements of the new curriculum standards for grammar teaching.In view of this,the researcher applied DDL to English grammar teaching at higher vocational college,aiming to explore the following research questions:（1）What are the effects of data-driven learning approach on higher vocational college students’ English grammatical competence?（2）What are the effects of data-driven learning approach on higher vocational college students’ English grammar learning strategies?The instruments of this study involve tests,questionnaires and interview.A 12-week teaching experiment was conducted,and the research subjects were 86 students from two parallel classes at a higher vocational college.A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was adopted.After collecting and sorting out the data,the researcher analyzed the data of tests and questionnaires with the help of SPSS17.0,and transcribed and analyzed the content of interview.The research findings show that the application of DDL approach is effective in improving English grammatical competence of higher vocational college students.Students in the experimental class significantly improved in their competence to use grammatical structures accurately and appropriately,but the ability to use grammatical structures meaningfully was not significant.Meanwhile,DDL had a positive impact on students’ use of grammar learning strategies（GLS）,especially in the use of metacognitive strategies,overall cognitive strategies and social strategies.However,the effects on affective strategies and “GLS used to deal with corrective feedback on errors in the production of grammar” under cognitive strategies were not significant.Finally,this thesis puts forward some teaching suggestions for future English grammar teaching at higher vocational colleges.