4.1.4 Limitation 13

4.2 Class observation 13

4.2.1 Participants 13

4.2.2 Recordings of class observation 13

4.2.3 Discussion 14

5. Conclusion 15

References 16

Appendix 1 17

Appendix 2 20

 1. Introduction

1.1 Background of the study   

    Nowadays, group work is frequently applied in teaching. On the one hand, it successfully develops students’ cooperative ability; on the other hand, it still exists some problems. For example, some students do not take part in the group work because of different factors. And now group work is also applied to teach English grammar in many schools in Hangzhou. However, some problems arise when teachers ask students to do group work in English grammar classes. And this study is to explore such problems.

1.2 Research questions

    In this thesis, research questions are as follows:

    1. Why does group work help teach English grammar in junior high school? 

2.When the teacher designs group work activities for English grammar classes, what should they pay

  more attention to? 

3. How to design efficient group work activities in English grammar classes?

1.3 Significance of the study

    Nowadays, most of the teachers have realized the importance of English grammar teaching, the problem now is that how to teach English grammar well, which is also the significance of this thesis. The aim of this thesis is to explore what kind of problems teachers and students may face when they do group work in English grammar class in junior high school. And the writer will discuss how to design group work in English grammar class and the advantages of group work in teaching English grammar, hoping that it will help teachers figure out how to teach English grammar well with the help of group work.

1.4 Layout of the thesis

The thesis consists of five chapters.

In chapter one, the writer mainly talks about the background, research questions and significance of the study.

    Chapter two consists of two parts. The first part presents the approaches of grammar teaching at home and abroad. And the second part mainly talks about group work.

Chapter three explains why group work can be used in English grammar class and how to design group work in English grammar class.

Chapter four consists of two parts. The first part is a questionnaire about the attitudes of students towards group work in English grammar class. And the second part is class observation, presenting the problems of group work in English grammar class and discussing how to solve the problems of group work in English grammar class.

 And the last chapter makes a summary of this thesis and addresses its limitations.

2. Literature review

2.1 Grammar teaching  

    We all know that teaching grammar is important in language teaching since grammar is the way in which sentences of a language are constructed. For Frank Palmer(1972), the central part of a language is its grammar, and this should be of vital interest to any intelligent educated person. If one doesn’t learn English grammar, then it’s very difficult for him to learn English well. Because grammar is the rule of the formation of sentences, if you don’t know the grammar, you can’t produce the target language correctly. So if the learners want to learn English well, they must learn English grammar. In other words, we should attach great importance to English grammar teaching.