A Study On The Application Of CA To English Teaching In Beijing Senior High School

This paper mainly discusses how effective the Communicative Approach (CA) is on the senior students' language abilities than the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) in the Beijing context through analyzing the advantages and disadvantages between CA and GTM and comparing the differences between the textbooks of the newly promulgated Senior High School English Curriculum Criterion (2002) and the old one (1996) . It attempts to explore more effective and practical ways to apply CA in Beijing senior middle schools.The major concern of this paper is whether CA will make students more interested in English class on their own initiatives and whether it will improve students' communicative competence and overall language abilities more than GTM. It is composed of six chapters:Chapter 1 is an introduction. It gives a brief description of the current situation of ELT in Beijing. At the same time, it presents the background of CA and the purpose of writing this paper.Chapter 2 offers literature review that provides the theoretical basis of two teaching methods —CA and GTM, and makes a brief comparison between the two methods, including their clear definitions, basic features and their limitations and aims. It also involves the definition of competence to reveal the key to communication.Chapter 3 focuses on the application of CA in the language teaching and learning in Beijing by analyzing the features of the New Criterion and the differences between the present and the former textbooks. It points out the necessity and significance of exploiting the advantages of CA in Beijing context. It also suggests some feasible types of the communicative activities and has the aid of the sample teaching plan to show the specific application of CA. It is hoped that these suggestions will help the Beijing high school English teachers to have a better understanding of CA and more and more teachers can apply this approach to their own teaching practice.Chapter 4 reports and introduces the procedure of experiment conducted by thewriter and prods the feasibility and operational methods of combining the communicative approach with English teaching in Beijing in order to reveal the effective application of CA in Beijing senior middle school, to a large degree.Then comes chapter 5 that presents the collected data and discusses the research result so as to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of CA in Beijing English teaching.The last chapter serves as a conclusion of the thesis.