| With the development of applied linguistics and language teaching method, grammar is endowed with a new meaning. Grammar is a description of the structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined in sentences in the language. It usually includes the meanings and functions these sentences have in the overall system of the language. That is, grammar is the combination of form, meaning and usage. This new grammar concept requires grammar teaching to take language function into consideration as well as language form. The same grammar structures can obtain different explanations in different contexts, therefore, the classroom teaching for grammar should adopt student-centered approach, and teachers should design various kinds of teaching activities to help students learn grammar in communicative circumstances.Communicative approach advocates student-centered teaching approach, fostering students’learning ability for language in actually use through different kinds of teaching activities, such as role-play in melodrama, contextual conversation, imitation, telling stories, interactive games. With the emergence of communicative approach, communicative competence as an indispensable component of grammatical knowledge, cannot be neglected. The ultimate goal of grammar teaching is to help students develop their language communicative competence, which is also the aim of communicative approach. Mastering grammar knowledge can help students understand the language better and more efficiently organize communicate activities. Thus, combining communicative approach with traditional grammar teaching method, communicative grammar teaching has definite research values.This thesis aims to explore the feasibility and effectiveness of adopting the communicative approach to teach grammar for English major students. The main research questions are:1) Compared with the traditional approach, can communicative approach more effectively help learners to grasp grammatical knowledge?2) To what extent can communicative approach improve students’ grammar competence?3) What are the pedagogical implications of the communicative grammar teaching?Based on two comparative classes, using questionnaires, interview and grammar level test, pre-test and post-test on experimental subjects of72sophomores of English majors of Jiujiang Vocational University have been conducted. Between the two comparative classes, one is experimental class made up of38students receiving communicative approach; the other is control class made up of34students receiving traditional grammar-translation approach. According to the experiment of one semester’s teaching and statistic analysis of the relevant data based on interview, pre-test, post-test and questionnaires by applying the software of SPSS, the research results are:1) It is appropriate for students with higher linguistic competence to be instructed by communicative approach while it is appropriate for those with weaker linguistic competence to be instructed by traditional grammar-translation approach.2) Communicative approach plays an active role in cultivating the students’ motivation and interests in grammar learning, that is to say, it strengthens the motivation of the students’ grammar learning, lessens the degree of their anxiety and improves their cognition of grammar learning.3) As the finding indicates, in general, communicative teaching approach is more effective than traditional approach in grammar teaching. Nonetheless, when applying this approach into the real world situation, teachers should put learner variety into consideration.According to a great number of the data, the study made quantitative and qualitative analysis of the results of the experiment and relevant data in empirical way. Some available suggestions were put forward for the future grammar teaching of English-major students and the limitations and directions for this research were pointed out for the future research. |
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