Teaching College Students English Tenses: A Communicative Approach

With China's economic progress and opening to the outside world, English has become the main media of the international politics talking, trade contacts and the transmission of worldwide information technique and education. However, college students, after many years of English study, are still unable to speak and understand English well. This thesis explores how teachers successfully teach grammar in CA by combining language forms and language functions. The aim is to cultivate their communicative competence.The author examines the background, conception, main characteristics of grammar and communicative approach and explores the feasibility that teachers teach grammar in CA. This thesis is a report of a 2-months experimental study of communicative approach in English tense. Two natural classes, one of which is the control class and the other of which is the experimental class, respectively major in Physics Department and Chinese Department at Yunnan Zhaotong Teachers'College, Where the author works. The author employed the traditional method and CA to teach English tense in the CC and EC. To make sure the validity of the experiment, the author knew their interest in English grammar before and after the experiment by knowing their scores for English in College Entrance Examination, pre-test, post-test and questionnaire. Luckily, the response proved to be the validity of the experiment. The scores for English in College Entrance Examination, pretest and questionnaire showed the students'English global proficiency and grammar proficiency are similar.The achievement of the pre-test, College Entrance English Examination and questionnaire before the experiment embodied there was not any significant difference in their grammar competence. And the achievement revealed by the post-test and questionnaire after the experiment demonstrated there was significant difference in their grammar competence (Especially in English tense). The achievement of the students in CC was lower than that in EC. Therefore, we can conclude that applying CA to teach English grammar can raise interest and achievement which can further improve the competence to use language.