Case Theory And Its Pedagogical Implications

In the on-going globalization process, communication is becoming increasing urgent between different nations, different languages and even within one language. In answer to this social need, various language theories are developed to facilitate the communication. Researches on this aspect are flourishing the world over. Case theory is one brilliant example among such theories. Theories remain theories if they are not put into application. It is for this reason that the present paper sets out to discuss case theory and its application.The purpose is to seriously examine various aspects of the theory including its birth, development, status quo, and future developmental trend as well as its tenets. But more importantly, the paper will focus on its practical values concerning language research, language teaching, and learners'learning outcome by way of case study and error analysis. In this way, an abstract theory can find its very practical use in social life and research areas. The paper embraces related concepts under discussion, including case grammar, government and C-command; case analysis in terms of chinglish, Black English and common errors of beginners; the pedagogical implication from the research of case theory.Our major findings are 1) there is a correlation between a theory and its actual practice; 2) many errors in language use stem from the user's poverty of the notion of cases; 3) in our everyday language teaching, it is a teacher's duty to cultivate a very strong sense of concept of cases through everyday teaching activities. Instead of grammatical analysis, attention should be given to priority of listening to other language skills, that is to say, listening precedes other language teaching activities. In life, learners should spare some of their precious time for the purpose of strengthening their aural capacity through mass media like CCTV, Channel-9, CRI, BBC, VOA and other English radio programs. If we could do this, case theory will find its ready acceptance and demonstrate its practicability. More attention to the research and application of the language teaching, learning and research theories is expected to be of some help in our daily use. That is the social significance of the paper.