An Experimental Study Of Communicative Grammar Teaching In Secondary Normal School

Teaching grammar is and continues to be a heated topic. It was thought to be not necessary in teaching a foreign language in some academic circles. However, with the development of teaching practice, the teaching of grammar has been widely recognized and is gaining more and more acceptance in those same academic circles that were once dismissing it as passe. It is a very good tool to help students grasp the language that they are studying as a foreign language. By looking at the language the foreign language learner can use the correct form when speaking and understand it better when listening. Without the real way of seeing and hearing and knowing completely the proper form of grammar and its structure, the foreign language learner differs in every possible way from the native user of a language.Study has shown that English crosses many paths in its efforts to communicate. The strategies used to teach a language must also take into consideration the fundamental tasks that confront a Chinese learner of English. English teaching practice has always neglected communication. Teachers that only teach grammar forget that it can isolate their learners from real communication. Students cannot communicate successfully even though they can make grammatically correct statements.To actually understand grammar it is necessary to look at the language itself. Linguists say that there are three parts to a language. They define them as form function and meaning. To properly learn a language they say that all three must be combined and have equal weight in the competence of language. Nowadays, a point of argument surrounding the foreign language teaching is how to teach grammar but not whether or not to teach it.From the 1970's on, there has been a change in research and direction of Communicative Approach to learn a foreign language. The practice of learning now not only includes Grammar Translation and Audio-Lingual methods but is combined with authentic examples of language use. It is done to put more emphasis on true communication. That is the type of communication that goes on in real life. It was not recognized in Chinese language academic circles until the 1980's. Now Chinese English teachers throughout China have begun to ask the questions again about a communicative framework that employs grammar. Communicative Approach offers the learner a communicatively based grammar approach, and again uses real and true statements to study in the classroom. They are taken from all types of areas and help the non native learner, in this case Chinese English learner to achieve a high level of proficiency and fluency in the English language. It is the present way that the Secondary Normal Schools teaching of English is going for now.This study presents CA in a way that will allow it to add to grammar teaching for the benefit of its Chinese learners. It does not seek to isolate from grammar teaching, but seeks to enhance it with CA to have the type of framework that will make language teaching truly effective.Study is based on the theories from Celce-Muria's effective way of grammar teaching, and Sandral. Mickay's general principles for grammar teaching and Scott Thornbury's basic principles for grammar teaching are also involved. Experiments and activities developed to integrate CA into grammar teaching. Consequently, the tools used in accomplishing this task for qualitative and quantitative were SPSS 14.0.Test subjects of the control and experimental group were chosen from Hebei Normal School for Kindergarten Teachers. The control group was treated with the methods of traditional Grammar Translation Method and the experimental group used CA. The 7 tenses was the material on which both groups are treated. The study was conducted from September 12^{th 2008} to January 15^{th 2009}.The results show that the teaching of grammar in the communication process does help learners to get more understanding than traditional instructions. These different approaches of teaching grammar in communication and suggestions of some techniques that combine communication with grammar are supposed to help teachers benefit in the way they teach grammar to their students. It is hoped that the findings will benefit teachers still using the traditional methods. The study's results show that the positive effect of teaching English grammar in communication is not only good but indeed helps the learner to solve problems that they developed while studying grammar at their Secondary Normal Schools.