Teaching Grammar With Communicative Approach In Senior Middle Schools

This paper is an attempt to argue for the necessity and even importance of teaching grammar in Communicative Approach. The author recommends an optimal English grammar teaching method by means of communicative activities in senior middle schools. Communicative Approach has been introduced into China since 1980s. It regards the development of communicative competence as the core of FLT. Communicative Approach has been one of the mainstreams influencing the methods of FLT of our country. Recently, it is necessary to rethink about the role of grammar teaching in the communicative framework. In the view of the author, CA does not involve neglection of the role of grammar teaching but involve integration of communicative activities into grammar teaching to obtain a good knowledge of language form and meaning, and get a balance between accuracy and fluency. It is significant to teach grammar in CA in the middle schools especially in the senior middle school because grammar is an important element of language, a basis of communicative competence and a tool of learning FL.First, to investigate the current state of adopting CA to the teaching of grammar, a survey of the communicative teaching of grammar in senior schools was conducted from the perspective of designing grammar lessons to motivate students to involve in communicative activities.Then the author presented a large number of classroom activities to illuminate how to teach grammar in Communicative Approach. These examples integrate sources and techniques such as the use of sentence-pattern-drill with pictures, cards or multi-medium.At last, the author applied these communicative activities to actual teaching practice, and made an experiment to test whether grammar teaching can be integrated to CA to senior middle school students. The experimental class was treated with CLT activities together with grammar instructions, and the control class was taught with the same CLT activities but without grammar instruction. The pre-test and post-test were conducted to both classes. Results from the experiment indicate that the result of eclectic teaching grammar in Communicative Approach is better than that of communicative activities without grammar instruction because students not only grasp the grammar rules but also know how to use them to communicate. Further implications and suggestions for schoolteachers are included in this thesis.