An Analysis Of And Reflection On Present-day High School Grammar Teaching

The role that grammar plays in language teaching has always been the controversial focus of language teaching researchers. In China, the Grammar-Translation Method used to be dominant for a long time, and grammar was highly valued then. But since it neglected the development of students' communicative ability, many people could not communicate in English with others even after many years' study. In recent years, with the introduction of Communicative Approach into China, the main aim of language teaching is to develop students' communicative competence, and grammar has become less important. Guided by theories of communicative language teaching, teaching materials of nine-year Middle School compulsory education in operation are organized in the system of a combination of topics, structures and functions, in which grammar is arranged implicitly and spirally. Although some teachers have realized the importance of grammar teaching through the use of communicative language teaching, they do not know how to manage it, only to return to the old teaching way, which makes grammar teaching more confusing. What's the proper position of grammar in English teaching? How to teach it well? What principles and methods should we follow? These questions have perplexing most middle school English teachers.The thesis, beginning with grammatical concepts, explains that grammar is not only static in form, but also dynamic in function. It's the combination of form, meaning and use. With theories of language learning, theories of learning foreign language as theoretical guidance, the thesis illustrates the aims and essence of grammar teaching;based on theories of cognitive psychology, social linguistic. It puts forward four principles( the cognitive principle;the communicative principle;the sequential principle;the systematical principle ) which the teachers should follow in their grammar teaching practice. Then this thesis analyses the present-day middle school teaching from four aspects. Today, the goal of middle school English teaching is to cultivate the students' comprehensive abilities of using English. Grammar is part of the linguistic knowledge which is the basis of language competence and the students' communicative ability is also based on the language competence in turn. Arranging grammar spirally, the text book has its advantages and disadvantages as well—it breaks the interconnection between grammatical points and neglects the consecutive and systematic nature of grammatical knowledge, which prevents the students getting an overall learning of grammar and is also unfavorable for their understanding and memorizing grammar. Meanwhile, a large number of English teachers' old and dull teaching ways result in the students' poor knowledge of grammar. From the analysis of NMET, we can see althoughthe test designers focus on testing the use of language, it doesn't work without a good command of grammatical rules.Based on the full knowledge of the importance of grammar in English teaching and the present-day middle school grammar teaching, the thesis reflects on the problems that exist in middle school grammar teaching and also comes up with several solutions. As English teachers, first we should use the teaching materials flexibly in the following two ways: put together and summarize the dispersive grammar points;rearrange and adjust some of the grammatical points. Besides, we English teachers should also make our teaching effective, which can be conducted in four ways: promote the students' cognitive ability through comparisons and analysis of grammatical points;make grammar teaching lively and interesting to develop the students' positive passion of learning grammar;teach grammar in contexts to develop the students' awareness of language use;design tasks to cultivate the students' ability of using the language creatively. Using the teaching materials flexibly and making the teaching effective in class can help the students construct their language system, enhance their language competence, cultivate their comprehensive abilities of using English, thus achieving the goal of middle school English teaching. In studying the principles and methods of grammar teaching, this thesis tries to combine theories with teaching practice and it also gives a variety of examples, aiming to provide the high school English teachers with some theory guidance and teaching suggestions. Hopefully it will be of any help to them.