The Application Of Context Theory To The Teaching Of Grammar In China's Senior Middle Schools

Grammar teaching has always been a controversial issue since the advent offoreign language teaching. With the development of linguistic studies and languageteaching, it is more certain that the three aspects of the language, form, meaning, andfunction are united as a whole and it is important and practical to pay equal attentionto the accuracy, fluency and appropriacy of the language. Nowadays, the mostcontroversial of the issues surrounding the foreign language teaching is not whether toteach grammar, but how to teach it. Besides, with the economic globalization, thedevelopment of science and technology and frequent international exchange, Chinaurgently needs people with solid linguistic knowledge and the ability to use English inreal situations. Therefore, it has become necessary for foreign language teaching tofocus on the use dimension as well as the form and meaning of the language.Senior middle schools are the place where the foundation of foreign languageeducation lays and grammar teaching is basic in foreign language teaching. However,in the current practice of grammar teaching, the use dimension is often neglected.Teachers often teach grammar in isolation and for its own sake. As a result, studentscannot use appropriate grammatical structures when the real communication isrequired, although they may produce some seemingly grammatical utterances. Tosolve such problems, English grammar teaching should shift from tradition, whichregards grammar as an isolated, context-free language system, to explore how to teachgrammar in certain contexts, with the expectation of cultivating learners' ability toexpress themselves accurately, fluently and appropriately in real-worldcommunication.Based on context theory, a survey study was carried out by using a teacherquestionnaire to investigate the current situation of applying context theory to Englishgrammar teaching in China's senior middle schools with the purpose of finding theproblems. It is found that although most of the school teachers have realized theimportance of context in English grammar teaching, few of them apply itsystematically. Even worse, few of the school teachers have a clear understanding ofthe concept of context and they are lack of techniques of applying context to theirgrammar instruction classrooms. For this reason, we have discussed differentapproaches to teaching grammar in context and suggested some techniques associatedwith different contexts in grammar teaching with the hope that they might be of somehelp. Simultaneously, an experiment was conducted to the students in Senior One tosearch after the feasibility and impact of teaching grammar in context, with ModalVerbs as the teaching content. The results show that teaching Modal Verbs in contextcan motivate learners to learn it and it is more effective for students to understand anduse Modal Verbs than traditional instruction.The positive result of the study shows that teaching English grammar in contextis not only helpful to solve the existing problems in grammar teaching in China'ssenior middle schools, but also significant to the theoretical construction of foreignlanguage teaching in China.