A Study On English Grammar Teaching In Senior High School Under The Background Of New English Curriculum

The necessity and importance of grammar instruction in foreign language teaching areuniversally accepted and recognized by a growing number of researchers and teachers inrecent years. However, judging from the development of foreign language teaching at homeand abroad, grammar teaching is the most controversial topic and subject in the field offoreign language teaching. In China, the attitude to the English grammar teaching hasundergone a kind of pendulum phenomenon and has gone through several stages fromemphasis to weakening and rejection then to being lost. In2003the Ministry of Educationamended and promulgated the "Ordinary Senior High School English Curriculum Standards(experimental)"(referred to as the "New Curriculum Standard" hereinafter).It made clear therequirements and specific interpretation on the status, aims, methods, principles of Englishgrammar teaching in high school.Existing domestic and international theoretical and empirical research on foreignlanguage grammar teaching are mainly around the quintessence, methods and strategies,implementation of grammar teaching under a certain kind of foreign language teachingmethods, as well as the status, role and methods of grammar teaching in foreign languageteaching. In contrast, there are relative lack of empirical research and studies on the actualsituation of current grammar teaching in senior high school, which play a theoretical andpractical role in grammar teaching and learning. Because of this, the thesis makes anempirical research based on theoretical exploration. The study of grammar teaching in seniorhigh school is insufficient so far and also is the field in which this is intended to work on.This thesis explores grammar-teaching methods in senior high school through thecombination of theoretical exploration and practical investigation. This thesis, beginning withgrammatical and grammar teaching concepts, on the one hand discusses the essence ofgrammar, illustrating that grammar is not only static linguistic structure but also playsdynamic linguistic role, and on the other hand explores the present situation of grammarteaching study and the new trend of grammar teaching of foreign language abroard and athome, and analyses the requirement on grammar teaching from the perspective of newcurriculum. In addition, on the basis of analysis of results of empirical investigation on thegrammar teaching, the author answers the research questions. It has been nearly nine years since the enactment and implementation of new curriculumstandards in2003. Currently what are the attitudes of English teachers in senior high school togrammar teaching? How do teachers teach grammar, how is the effective, and whether theymeet the requirements and idea of the new curriculum? What are the difficulties encounteredby the grammar teaching? In order to have a specific knowledge of and attempt to solve theexisting problems, the author conducted a survey of the actual situation of grammar teachingsince the enactment of the new curriculum in some high schools of Shandong Province. Thesurvey found that most teachers recognized and realized the importance and goal of grammarteaching and pointed out that grammar teaching is necessary and must be taught during thewhole process of English teaching; the majority of teachers adopted the combination withinductive and deductive methods to teach grammar; there are a diversity of strategies, modelsand ways of grammar teaching and at present teachers enhance the practice of teachingactivities during grammar teaching. But meanwhile the survey also found some problems andphenomenon: the understanding of the core of new curriculum standards and the methods offoreign language teaching is not thorough and profound; the attitudes to students’ languageerrors are biased; the capabilities and abilities to design activities and tasks need to beimproved in non-traditional grammar teaching; grammar learning enthusiasm of high schoolstudents is quite low.With the goal of developing comprehensive linguistic competence, I put forward somesuggestions for new methods in grammar teaching under the new curriculum criteria.Grammar should be taught in the process of the students’ completion of tasks, in the situationfor arousing studennts’ interest, in combination of deductive and inductiive for improvingeffectiveness, in the comparison between mother longue and target language so as to discoverthe inherent rules of English which are hopefully to preliminary insights for the furtherresearches on English grammar teaching in senior high school.