A Survey Of Grammatical Competence Of English Majors

For several decades, the definition of grammatical competence has been a question of controversy. Some scholars hold that grammatical competence deals solely with the structural and formal knowledge, while others insist that the use aspect should be included into grammatical competence. Larsen-Freeman (2003) defines grammatical competence as the aggregation of three dimensions, namely grammatical form, semantic meaning and pragmatic use. In China, the newly revised teaching syllabus for English majors (2000) requires the advanced learners (juniors and seniors) to not only master grammatical knowledge but also have the ability to use grammar structures accurately and appropriately, which clearly includes the aspect of pragmatic use.Therefore, the present study, based on Larsen-Freeman's framework (2003) of grammatical competence, aims to investigate the general grammatical competence of English majors, to explore the problems existing in their grammatical competence and to provide suggestions on grammar teaching for college English majors accordingly.The participants in this study, who were selected randomly, were 45 junior English majors studying at the School of Foreign Languages, Northeast Normal University. A test was designed to examine the participants'grammatical competence from the perspectives of knowledge and use of the knowledge in actual contexts. The collected data were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively in terms of the three dimensions of grammatical competence proposed by Larsen-Freeman (2003), which are form, meaning (semantics) and use (pragmatics).The results revealed that although the participants possessed solid grammatical knowledge, they lacked high level of accuracy and native-like appropriateness in actual use in given contexts. Firstly, although the participants were junior English majors, they lacked high level of accuracy in actual use. Secondly, it was found that although in most cases the participants had recognized the social factors in the given context, they still failed to perform appropriately. This phenomenon reveals the problems in their grammatical competence: inadequate mastery of linguistic devices with the same function, inability to match the grammatical structure to the specific context, and incompetence of discourse-level grammar.