Narrating the Past in Different Contexts: C-BI Approach to the Present Perfect and Past Simple
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Xinhui Xu
Xinhui Xu is an M. Ed. graduate of Hangzhou Normal University. She is a teacher at Hangzhou World Foreign Language School, China. Her main interests are second language acquisition, English pedagogy, and curriculum design and development.
Hongwei Zhan is Professor of English (applied linguistics) at Hangzhou Normal University, China. His research efforts have focused on applied linguistics, theories of lexico-grammar.
Abstract
Concept-based instruction (C-BI) has proven to be effective in improving students’ command of grammar items used out of context by offering the students revision lessons, but its effect in teaching newly-introduced grammar items in a complex context of a specific genre remains unclear. To probe C-BI’s effect on students’ use of the past simple and present perfect tenses out of context and in the context of a narrative by its description of the grammar concept in its materialization, that is, the Schemas of a Complete Orienting Basis of an Action (SCOBAs), we taught the two tenses to 40 eighth-graders in a Chinese middle school in our three-week teaching experiment. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results shows that i) in both out-of-context use and in-context use, accuracy of using the target tenses is higher after C-BI intervention; ii) by improving their conceptual knowledge through C-BI, the students are helped to pin down reference time and are hence more certain in using the target tenses. Moreover, they are encouraged to use the newly-introduced tenses in the complex context of the narrative genre; iii) both in simple contexts or complex contexts, the SCOBAs are effective in helping students navigate the learning task and determine their intended meaning by establishing temporal reference in the context.
About the authors
Xinhui Xu is an M. Ed. graduate of Hangzhou Normal University. She is a teacher at Hangzhou World Foreign Language School, China. Her main interests are second language acquisition, English pedagogy, and curriculum design and development.
Hongwei Zhan is Professor of English (applied linguistics) at Hangzhou Normal University, China. His research efforts have focused on applied linguistics, theories of lexico-grammar.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Testing and Assessment
- Changes in Argumentation Performance: Effects of Teacher-Student Collaborative Assessment
- Dynamic Assessment of College EFL Learners’ Speaking Proficiency: A Case Study
- Teacher Development
- Who Are We, What Can We Do, and What Do We Think? Review on EAP Teacher Development
- Second Language Acquisition
- A Development Study on the Ordering Distribution of Temporal Adverbial Clauses by Chinese EFL Learners Based on Dependency Treebank
- Second Language Teaching
- Narrating the Past in Different Contexts: C-BI Approach to the Present Perfect and Past Simple
- Second Language Writing
- The Application of Pragmatic Presupposition in Developing Critical Thinking of Writing
- Source Work in China-Based and Western SSCI Journal Articles: Preferences of Reporting Structures of English Academic Articles Published in China and in English-Speaking Countries
- Abstracts
- Chinese Abstracts
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Testing and Assessment
- Changes in Argumentation Performance: Effects of Teacher-Student Collaborative Assessment
- Dynamic Assessment of College EFL Learners’ Speaking Proficiency: A Case Study
- Teacher Development
- Who Are We, What Can We Do, and What Do We Think? Review on EAP Teacher Development
- Second Language Acquisition
- A Development Study on the Ordering Distribution of Temporal Adverbial Clauses by Chinese EFL Learners Based on Dependency Treebank
- Second Language Teaching
- Narrating the Past in Different Contexts: C-BI Approach to the Present Perfect and Past Simple
- Second Language Writing
- The Application of Pragmatic Presupposition in Developing Critical Thinking of Writing
- Source Work in China-Based and Western SSCI Journal Articles: Preferences of Reporting Structures of English Academic Articles Published in China and in English-Speaking Countries
- Abstracts
- Chinese Abstracts
