Chapterl Introduction

1.1 Background of the Research

As we all know, grammar teaching has been greatly affected by theGrammar-Translation Method for long in China. At present, the phenomenon of "theemphasis on instructing knowledge and neglect of training ability" in senior high schoolEnglish grammar teaching is serious. In traditional grammar teaching method, teachersfocus on the structures of grammar and try to convey enough information about grammarby giving a lot of examples, and students are already accustomed to listening and takingnotes. Teachers try their best to explain each item as clearly as they can and try to getacross more information to the students. Meanwhile, students make every effort to leamrules of grammar by heart. The goal of the students' English grammar learning is for thehigh scores, which results in the situation where students cannot use grammar rules freelyand effectively in real life communication.In the 1980s，Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) was introduced into China,which lays stress on meaning and use of language instead of language form. So far, theCLT has been widely acknowledged by the Teaching English as a Foreign Language(TEFL) circle in China. In accordance with the goal of the communicative approach，theEnglish textbooks have been comprehensively revised. In 1996, a considerabletransformation of middle school English textbooks took place across China, that is,English textbooks are function-oriented rather than structure-oriented. These years haveseen far-reaching changes and applying CLT in practical English teaching has made bigprogress. Despite all this, some existing problems remain to be solved，among whichgrammar teaching is far from satisfactory. In spite of their success in developing highlyfunctional skills in learners, they haven't led to matching accuracy in production (Skehan2002).

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1.2 Significance of the Research

Grammar teaching is of great importance in foreign language teaching in China，anddebates on the ways of teaching grammar have never ceased. Such debates mainly focuson not whether to teach grammar or not，but what to teach and how to teach grammar. Itis well-known that the Grammar-Translation Method is dominant for a long time. In themiddle school English classrooms, the language teaching are grammar-focused and theteacher is the center of classroom activities. In addition, in China the emphasis of Englishteaching is on the academic study of grammar and sentence structures. Training students'language communicative ability is largely ignored. Later on, CLT was introduced intoChina, it was misconceived as a pure meaning-focus method without grammaticalinstruction. As a consequence, though it is a good teaching method to improve thestudents' ability of listening and speaking, the accuracy in producing the target languageis ignored and fossilization of learners' errors appears. In such a situation，it's moreessential than other tasks to find a relatively effective, suitable method of grammarteaching for the teachers and students and to improve the students' competence of usinglanguage. There is no doubt that the Balanced Activities Approach is the right approachwhich overcomes the disadvantages of other teaching methods, combining the structureswith meaning and also balancing the accuracy and fluency of language use.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review and Theoretical Foundation

2.1 Grammar and Grammar Teaching

Grammar is defined as the study of language which deals with the forms andstructures of words (morphology), with their customary arrangement in phrases andsentences (syntax)，and now often with language sound (phonology), usuallydistinguished from the study of word meanings (semantics, semaciology) by TheWebste 's New World Dictionary (1968). Grammar is also given a definition as thescience of rules for the forms of words and words into sentences by Oxford AdvancedLearner 's Dictionary (1993). Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (Longman,1995) gives Grammar a definition as the science of using the rules by changing forms ofwords and combining into sentences.In addition，English grammar has also been defined in different aspects by manynotable linguistic scholars, such as:Lyons(1968) thinks that grammar is that branch of the description of languageswhich accounts for the way in which words combine into form sentences (quoted fromStem，1983:131).Halliday (1985) regards grammar as the study of how form，meaning and use worktogether to enable learners to communicate through language (quoted in George Yule,2002)

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2.2 Balanced Activities Approach (BAA)

Many notable linguists have attempted to give 'activities' different definitions fromdifferent perspectives. What ‘activities, actually involves is discussed as follows:According to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, ‘activities’ issomething that is done or is being done，especially for interest or education.Harmer (1983) points out, ‘activities，is a loose term used to give a generaldescription of what happens in a class, that is, what generally and physically, the studentsare doing in a classroom. From this viewpoint, a game is an activity, so is a simulation.The introduction of new language is an activity; so is parallel writing or storyreconstruction. Listening is an activity and so is an information gap task; social talk is anactivity, so is an oral composition. Australian Language Levels Guidelines (1988) defines ‘activity’ as ‘an activityinvolves the purposeful and active use of language where learners are required to callupon their language resource to meet the needs of a given communicative situation.'Jack C. Richards (2000) describes 'activities' as a task that has been selected toachieve a particular teaching or learning goal.Littlewood (2001) also points out that activities should provide 'whole-task'practice，improve motivation, allow natural learning and create a context that supportslearning.Ann Malamah-Thomas (2004) defines ‘activities’ as ‘what the teacher does，ormakes the student do，in the classroom in order to present or practice the targetlanguage'.

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Chapter 3 A Model of Grammar Teaching with a BAA Framework.......... 13

3.1 A Model of BAA Grammar Teaching.......... 13

3.2 Teaching principles of BAA Grammar Teaching.......... 19

Chapter 4 An Experiment of English Grammar Teaching Using BAA........... 22

4.1 Research Hypotheses.......... 22

4.2 Research Subjects.......... 22

4.3 Research Materials.......... 23

4.4 Research Instruments ..........23

4.5 Research Procedures ..........25

Chapter 5 Results and Discussion.......... 27

5.1 Data and Analysis ..........27

5.1.1 Data and Analysis of Questionnaires.......... 27

5.1.2 Data and Analysis of Language Tests.......... 29

5.1.3 Data and Analysis of Classroom Observations.......... 31

5.2 Discussion about the Results ..........32

Chapter 5 Results and Discussion

5.1 Data and Analysis

It has been mentioned above that the questionnaires on interest and their intrinsicmotivation towards English grammar learning were conducted to 55 students of class 3before and after the experiment. The results of the investigation are shown in thefollowing table. As is shown in Table 5.1, more than 70% of the students of E-C before theexperiment agreed that grammar is of great use, that grammar learning is of importanceand they want to leam grammar well. However，81.82% of the students believed thatthere are too many grammatical rules, it is too difficult to leam grammar, so only 21.20%of them agreed that they are interested in learning grammar. It is not surprising that69.09% of the students held a belief that grammar classes are boring. However,confusingly, 52.72% of the students liked to listen to the teacher, but only a small numberof them (21.82%) liked to answer questions in class. As it turned out, the students wereaccustomed to listening to the teacher and taking notes and unwilling to be involved inteaching activities. As a consequence, 52.75 % of the students said that they were notconfident in learning grammar well. In terms of the question “I like to take part inactivities in grammar classes”，only one fifth like to take part in activities in grammarclasses, 32.73% of the students felt confused about activities in grammar classes, 25.45%showed that they had no idea .

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Conclusion

The study is designed to find out the effects of the BAA grammar teaching model ongrammar teaching in senior high schools in China. After a 16-week experiment, theresearcher has analyzed all the results of questionnaires, language tests and classroomobservations and get some findings. The experimental class has been improved greatlyespecially in the language communicative competence while the control class has alsoincreased themselves in terms of the mean score of written test. As the two groups werealmost the same through the pre-test before the experiment, the different results can be onlydue to the different teaching method adopted in the experiment: the BAA grammar teachingreceived by the experimental class speeded their achievements，while the traditional methodof grammar teaching accepted by the control class has obvious limitations.To sum up, the major findings of the research lie in the following two respects:The new mode of grammar teaching produces a significantly positive influence onimproving the effectiveness of teacher's teaching and promoting learners' motivation,attitude, interest and language communicative competence during the process of Englishlanguage learning and acquisition.

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