The Application Of Communicative Approach To Grammar Teaching In Senior High Schools

Grammar teaching has been a controversial subject in senior high school English teaching in China. Should grammar be taught? What is a more proper way of grammar teaching? How can the communicative competence and language accuracy be balanced in the senior high school English teaching? Grammatical knowledge is traditionally viewed as the most important language element so that formal instruction of grammar is made the goal of English language teaching, but the students'ability of using language is totally neglected. D. Hymes believed that linguistic rules were connected with language in use and proposed the concept of communicative competence, pointing out that the competent speaker must have the knowledge of how to use language both appropriately and effectively.Communicative Approach (CA) began and developed on the basis of the theory of communicative competence, and later communicative competence is made the ultimate goal of English language teaching. However, at present, in the process of adapting CA in the English language teaching in China, there exist some misconceptions. In fact, CA mainly includes four aspects: that is, whether or not something is formally possible; whether or not something is feasible; whether or not something is appropriate to context; whether or not something is in fact done. Obviously, grammatical competence is an essential aspect of communicative competence. Grammar teaching, if positively looked at, helps learners to become skilled in recognizing, analyzing and eventually mastering these elusive structural features. It is really crucial that grammatical instruction has an important role in CA in Chinese settings. There have been many noted functionalists, pioneers and advocates of CA who claim that in language teaching grammatical instruction is not only indispensable but also of access to the teaching goal. In China, many scholars have pointed out that the adaptation of CA in the English classroom does not mean the rejection of the grammar teaching or the traditional teaching methods, and the relation between communicative competence and grammar teaching is the one of the ends and means. And CA does not mean one method but rather an approach, having varied and flexible methods in practice. The essential point of CA is"using English to learn", or"learning to use English". For the case in China, the purpose of adapting CA lies in"learning to use English".This thesis explores how teachers conduct grammar teaching by combining language forms and functions and have students take an active part in the meaningful communicative activities in the process of using language. It is helpful to change the inefficiency of English language teaching in China's situation so as to achieve a more efficient teaching goal: communicative competence.In order to identify the effect of Communicative Approach in the senior school English grammar teaching in the present examination situation, an empirical research as a comparative study was performed. Data were collected by using the following instruments: pre-test and post-test, questionnaire surveys and the experiment. The experiment was designed in the following ways: the experimental class received the Communicative Approach to English grammar teaching while the control class received the traditional method to English grammar teaching. The study attempted to answer the following questions:(1) Will the Communicative Approach to English grammar teaching in the senior high school improve the learners'English grammar level more effectively than the traditional approach?(2) Will the Communicative Approach to English grammar teaching in the senior high school increase the learners'learning interest, confidence, motivation and learning strategies more greatly than the traditional approach?The examination results from the six-week experiment indicated the significant difference in English grammar proficiency measured according to the popular NMET (National Matriculation English Test) between the learners taught with the Grammar-Translation Method and those taught with Communicative Approach. Meanwhile the results from questionnaires indicated that the learners with Communicative Approach improve their English learning interest, motivation and confidence more greatly than those taught with the Grammar-Translation Method.