Strategies Of Grammatical Instruction For A Communicative Purpose

Grammatical knowledge is traditionally viewed as the most important so that formal instruction is made the goal of English language teaching and the ability of using the language is totally neglected. D. Hymes believed that linguistic rules were connected with language in use and proposed the concept of communicative competence, pointing out that the competent speaker must have a knowledge of how to use language both appropriately and effectively. Besides the knowledge of the language, he must know when and where to speak, what to talk about, and in what manner to speak. Based on Hymes' notion of communicative competence, Canale and Swain have developed it and made it better and more influential. Communicative competence, according to them, consists of four components: grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence.Communicative Language Teaching or Communicative Approach has begun and developed on the basis of this theory of communicative competence and later communicative competence is made the ultimate goal of English language teaching. However, at present, in the practice of adapting CLT in Chinese English language teaching, there exist some misconceptions and misimplenientation of doing it.It is really crucial whether grammatical instruction has its role in CLT hi Chinesesettings. There have been many noted functionalists and the pioneers and advocates of CLT, such as Wilkin, Widdowson, Stem, Harmer and Littlewood, who claimed that in language teaching, grammatical instruction is not only indispensable but also of the access to the teaching goal. As Stern (1999: 144) states: Grammar teaching, if positively looked at, helps learners to become skilled in recognizing, analyzing and eventually mastering these elusive structural features which are an essential aspect of proficiency.There, in China, also are many scholars who wrote articles pointing out that the adaptation of CLT in Chinese classroom does not mean the rejection of the grammar teaching or the traditional teaching methods, the relation between communicative competence and grammar teaching is the one of the ends and means. And CLT does not mean one method but rather an approach, having varied and flexible methods in practice. The essential point of CLT is "using English to learn," or " learning to use English." For the case in China, it is more suitable to adapt the latter.This dissertation aims to explore the necessity and the function of the formal instruction in the adaptation of CLT to ELT in China, some theory and notions which Chinese English teachers should maintain, and then puts forward the possible ways of formal instruction through communicative approaches, integrating language forms into language functions in order to make a change of the inefficiency of ELT in China's situation to a more efficient teaching objective: communicative competence. This dissertation also explores some teaching activities of grammatical instruction for a communicative purpose. By doing these activities, the learners can consciously be aware of the communicative function of the language and they can systematically obtain grammatical competence, and the other three competences.This dissertation consists of seven chapters.Chapter One serves as an introduction, which indicates the objective of ELT, presents the current situation of ELT hi China, and outlines the general structure of this dissertation.Chapter Two discusses the notion of communicative competence and its development, reviewing Hymes' notion of communicative competence and the development of the concept of communicative competence by Canale and Swain. It also discusses some of the characteristics of CLT which is developed from the theory of communication.Chapter Three discusses the role of formal instruction in CUT and the importance of the fostering Learner's language awareness.Chapter Four is concerned with the possibility of teaching grammar for a communicative purpose. For grammatical competence is one of...