The Research Of Second Language Acquisition And Teaching Methods

Communicative discipline is one of the most widely adopted teaching strategies in language teaching today. Many consider it one of the best approaches to language teaching in the future.Almost at the same time when communicative approach was practiced in the teaching of language, it displayed superb advantage over other methods, but many problems did arise as well. Such as the learners did much better in communication and developed more communication strategies but were more often inaccurate in their linguistic forms. To tackle this problem, forerunners of "communicative approach" Hymes and Halliday put forth a revised form of communicative approach that integrated a certain amount of linguistic knowledge instruction and grammar drillings into the new communicative discipline. Later, it was to be called the "weak form" of communicative approach, contrary to which was the "strong form" of communicative approach that emphasized the communication itself and denied the instruction of linguistic knowledge all together.The research of the language teaching deals with only one side of the coin without a look at the language acquisition. The second language acquisition research which began in the middle of last century that took into its attention the analysis of the learner errors, the interlanguage together with the learner himself opened up new vistas for the research of language teaching and language acquisition. The formation of psycholinguistics provided us a powerful methodology as well. So the theory of language acquisition entered a new era.Any approach is the outcome of a certain period of history, and it originated from that stage of human history and was born to meet the demands it might have upon the linguists of the time. A reconsideration of the teaching theories in history may throw some light on the present-day language acquisition research. During the postwar years, with the development of the world economy and the international exchanges, foreign languages play an ever important role in the world today. More people with not only sound grammatical knowledge but also excellent communication competence are required. Communicative approach got started in such a situation to meet the demand of the time. But it went to an extremity during the first days of its birth, i.e. it closed its eyes to the instruction of language knowledge and stressed only the communica- tion ability on the part of the learners. So, how to introduce a certain amount of grammar into the communicative approach is again on the agenda.Approaching the research of second language learning, we must begin with first language acquisition, because it is a good model of successful learning of a language. To discover the mysteries that lie behind easy learning means ever so much for linguists and language teachers.Through discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of both the communicative and the traditional grammar-translation methods and analysis of the target group, the present dissertation endeavors to demonstrate the two different approaches suit learners of different groups and different ages as well and clarify that communicative approach is better applied in kindergartens and primary schools to build up children's phonologic awareness and ABC of communication competence while for middle-school students and adults who have better cognitive abilities, a combination of both communication and traditional methods may be employed to better meet the their thirst for all-round abilities of both knowledge and operation.