Teaching Grammar In Communicative Classroom Under The Form-focused Instruction

Grammar teaching is debated a lot related with its being taught or not in the field of second Language Teaching. In fact, nowadays the situation of Grammar teaching changes greatly, from the dominant position in Grammar-Translation Method to the zero position in CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) in 1980s. But in recent years the importance of grammar in language teaching is reconsidered. To cultivate the communicative competence is the aim of CLT and at the same time grammatical competence should not be ignored being as an inseparable component of communicative competence. Therefore, one of the current concerns of applied linguists is concentrated on the most effective way of grammar teaching in the communicative classroom and make some achievements in the study of it. This paper aims to put forwards an effective way of grammar teaching in the communicative classroom in the EFL (English as a foreign language) setting in China.'Focus on form', suggesting that attention to form should be encouraged in communicative language classrooms, has aroused an increasing interest in the field of second language teaching methods. However, no systematic explicit grammar instruction is discussed a lot in form-focused instruction. On the basis of the features of the EFL setting in China, two patterns of grammar teaching are advocated. Meanwhile a systematic explicit grammar instruction by the teacher is combined with communicative language teaching.An experiment focusing on the past simple tense in English grammar was done to test the effect of the two patterns. The experiment was carried out in two classes of Junior One in Ji'nan Foreign Languages School. One class was the control class, in which English past simple tense was taught through traditional instruction, while the other was the experimental class, in which 'focus on form' instruction was added with systematic explicit grammar instruction. The statistical results showed the advantages of the form-focused instruction over the traditional one. It tells that systematic explicit grammar instruction can be taken as a choice of grammar teaching in the communicative classroom in China.This study has had significance to grammar teaching. Mainly, traditional methods may not be exclusive to some new approaches in grammar teaching; the key is that we manage to find a suitable way to combine them for the best results and try to find a pedagogically sound and empirically grounded position for grammar in the communicative classroom in China.