An Empirical Study On Communicative Language Teaching In English Grammar Class In Senior Middle School

Nowadays, the chief aim of foreign language teaching (FLT) is to cultivate the students'communicative competence, thus the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is accepted by many teachers in many countries. However, in the practice of adopting CLT in Chinese English language teaching, there are some misunderstandings. Many people think that this approach can be only used to teach listening and speaking. They either neglect the grammar teaching in CLT or hold that CLT and grammar teaching are contradictory to each other. Meanwhile, the status of grammar is questioned. In order to foster the students'communicative competence, some people even propose that grammar is not important and should not be taught in the classroom. In fact, the grammar instruction is not only indispensable but also of the access to the teaching goal. It is obvious that the challenge we are facing is not to decide whether to teach grammar or not, but to explore how to teach grammar more effectively. Grammatical competence is the basis of the communicative competence. Applying CLT to grammar class is of great importance to cultivate the students'communicative competence. In China, many scholars believe that the adoption of CLT in Chinese classroom does not mean the rejection of grammar teaching. The relationship between communicative competence and grammar teaching should be that of the ends and the means.This thesis makes an empirical study on the feasibility of CLT in grammar class in Chinese senior middle school. It aims at probing into the various ways of CLT in grammar class, helping Chinese senior middle school teachers discover more effective ways in their teaching of grammar, and promoting students'ability of using language. In the experiment, two classes in an ordinary senior middle school were randomly selected as Experimental Class and Control Class. The two classes were taught by CLT and traditional method respectively. The data of the achievement test before the present experiment showed that they share a similar level of the overall English proficiency. The pre-test made before the experiment demonstrated that there wasn't any distinction between the two classes in their grammatical competence in Attributive Clause. The post-test conducted after the experiment embodied that there was significant difference in terms of their grammatical competence in Attributive Clause between the two classes. The scores of the students in Experimental Class were higher than that in Control Class. The different teaching methods lead to different learning outcomes, from which the following conclusion can be drawn: applying CLT in grammar class in Chinese senior middle school is feasible; CLT is more effective than the traditional method, since it can bring about the genuine progress in learners'grammatical competence.The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter one is the brief introduction to the whole thesis. It begins with the problems of the current English grammar teaching in senior middle school, then the research questions are addressed and the significance of the study is pointed out.Chapter two is the literature review of the thesis. Some theories related to the present research are covered. It starts with the discussion of communicative competence and Communicative Language Teaching. The former one is now regarded as the ultimate goal of FLT, and has become the theoretical basis underlying CLT. The latter one is considered as the current mainstream of FLT, which make the students engaged in various kinds of communicative activities and thus cultivate their communicative competence. What follows in this chapter is the understanding of grammar and grammar teaching, in which the thesis illustrates that grammar teaching is extremely important and necessary for FLT, and should be integrated into the CLT framework. At the end of this part, the thesis discusses the four most influential CLT models in grammar class, which proves that CLT and grammar teaching are not contradictory to each other, and the integration of the two will bring about both fluency and accuracy of language production.Chapter three is the methodology of the research. It makes an empirical study on CLT in grammar class in Chinese senior middle school in terms of the subjects, instruments, the approach, the design, the procedures, data-collection and data-analysis. It employs a communicative technique, which creates opportunities for students to use the target language by providing them with the designed communicative grammar tasks and various kinds of context consisting grammar. It is an investigation of the effect of CLT in English grammar class with an aim to examine the relationship between the teaching method and the teaching and learning outcomes.Chapter four is the results and discussion of the experiment. Through the comparative analysis of the language tests and the questionnaires of the two classes, it gives the eloquent proof that CLT can be used in grammar class in Chinese context, and that CLT is more effective than the traditional method, since it can bring about the genuine progress in learners'grammatical competence.Chapter five is the general conclusion of the thesis. We can conclude that applying CLT in grammar class in Chinese senior middle school is feasible, and that CLT is more effective than the traditional method in promoting learners'grammatical competence. It stresses that a thorough and correct understanding and a positive adoption of CLT are needed in the improvement of the current Chinese English grammar class. For the teacher, a good recognition of the core of CLT and various kinds of techniques are indispensable. Besides, teaching grammar in CLT requires the teacher to combine the teaching content with the language use, to integrate the language forms with the language functions, so that they can facilitate the learners'improvement of their grammatical competence, and reach the teaching goal of developing students'communicative competence.