A Study On The Application Of Consciousness-raising Approach To Teaching Grammar

English grammar teaching is an indispensable aspect of English language teaching. It is also one of the difficulties in second/ foreign language (SL/ FL) teaching and research. Since late 1980s, the teachers and researchers in SL/ FL language teaching field have reached a consensus on the significance of grammar teaching; however, quite a few teachers are still at a loss about "how to teach". There are many SL/ FL language teaching methods or approaches including grammar-translation method, the direct method, audio-lingual method, cognitive approach, the natural approach, communicative language teaching, task-based instruction, focus-on-form instruction and consciousness-raising approach etc., all of which has its own advantages and disadvantages. Giving a detailed discussion to the characteristics of consciousness-raising approach, the author tentatively suggests that it is more practical in China taking into consideration the class size, teaching time and teaching objectives.Based on a lot of research, the author proposes a general procedure for grammar teaching and conducts an empirical study to test the effectiveness of this approach. Two classes from the Binjiang College of Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology are chosen as the participants of the study. During one semester's teaching, the traditional method is adopted in the control class while the consciousness-raising approach is adopted in the experiment class. Result in the post-experiment test indicates that there is a significant difference between the two classes and the response to the post-experiment questionnaire also shows that consciousness-raising approach is well-received among the students, which proves that this approach is effective and practical in Chinese grammar classroom.