On The Necessity Of Grammar Teaching In ELT In Middle Schools

There have been debates on the necessity of grammar teaching in the English language teaching in China over the past few decades. Since the Communicative Language Teaching was introduced into the middle schools of the country, it has been misunderstood to some extent and many teachers have been afraid to carry out or even mention grammar teaching in their classrooms. What is worse, in the newly published curriculum standard for middle school English teaching, the position of language knowledge teaching, of which grammar teaching is an indispensable part, is not attached enough importance to, which will confuse the teachers and have a negative effect on the development of middle school English language teaching. In order to clear up the misunderstanding of the Communicative Language Teaching and attach enough importance to grammar teaching in middle school English language teaching, this thesis has attempted to elaborate on the necessity of grammar teaching from such angles as the nature of grammar, the objective of English teaching, the ultimate aim of education, the nature of ELT in China and the practice of various methodological schools.The thesis tries to make clear the following points:Grammar as the law of language is essential to language.The relationship between grammar teaching and language skill cultivation is not one of contradiction but one of co-existence and mutual dependence, for language knowledge is the foundation of language skills and language skills are not only the means for communication but also the means for acquiring language knowledge.The nature of grammar determines that grammar teaching is necessary. Different linguists reveal the nature of grammar from different angles. Structural linguists think that each language has its own structures. In cognitive linguists' view, people can use the already learned rules to infer what they have not learned. Transformational-Generative Linguistics thinks that grammar is a kind of "sentence-making machine" and many sentences can be generated by making use of grammar. Sociolinguistics thinks thatgrammar is a necessary part of communicative competence. Psycholinguistics thinks that FL learners often hypothesize and then test the grammatical rules of the target language according to the language materials to which they are exposed and the system of the target language is set up by hypothesis testing.The ultimate aim of English teaching is to enable students to use English as a communicative tool in both spoken and written forms. Knowledge centered on grammar is the basis of communicative competence and a requirement of humanistic quality education. Grammar teaching is not the ultimate aim of English language teaching but a means to achieve communicative competence.In modern society the ultimate aim of education is "to teach the learners how to learn". Lifelong learning is necessary and English learning is a very important part of lifelong learning. "Grammar is a kind of knowledge that can produce knowledge". It can enable learners to learn English well to get more information after they leave schools.The nature of English teaching in China determines that in China English is taught as a foreign language. The grammatical knowledge can not only be used to monitor input and output, it can also be used to understand what is heard or read.Different methodological schools may have different attitudes towards grammar, but none of them totally deny the importance of grammar teaching in the course of language teaching.What is stated above brings the thesis to the natural conclusion that grammar teaching is necessary in the English language teaching in middle schools in China.