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摘要:傳统的语法教学大都使用演绎、推理或归纳法。传统的教学法受到现代教学法的冲击。淡化语法教学是现代英语教学的必然趋势。本文从高职院校学生的实际情况出发,以不定式为例提出英语语法教学的一些构想。
关键词:高职院校;语法教学;构想
中图分类号:G642 文献标识码:A 文章编号:1000-8136(2009)33-0089-03
1Introduction
Recent developments in language teaching have left many doubting about how to teach grammar. How to teach it effectively and meaningfully is the problem we face. The traditional ways of grammar teaching has been beaten by the communicative approaches. But they still have some instructive meanings. In designing a language class, one of the first things is to identify the influential factors that have to be taken account. At least the designer should consider the features unique to the learning of a language. Learning a language well always means the use of ears, mouth, hands, brain, etc. as well as the eyes. This will mean significant adjustment of a learning class involving a lot of contents including the materials and the activities. And this is one of the reasons why modern language classes are usually all communicative, with very rare exceptions. From his experience, the writer finds that the traditional ways of grammar teaching such as deduction and induction are still instructive. Thus,he wants to try a comprehensive way to teach English grammar. This paper tries to introduce a comprehensive approach of teaching English rammar in context instead of in isolation.
2The students’ background
2.1Features of students in vocational college
If a language class is communicative, it is then basically learner-centered. Therefore most of the influential factors in the designing of such a class will be very much related to or decided by the nature and need of the learners in question.
A language-teaching plan may be viewed as the teachers’ main guidelines, but it is the students who are set to benefit. Therefore when planning a class, first one has to learn about the learners, who the learners are and what they do. Research has shown the differences between college students and child language learners, which must be considered in the planning of a language class. Some experts summaries 10 characteristics of college language learners, which may serve as a guide for the class planning. College students, for instance, are more likely to be learning rather than acquiring a new language, and this feature should exclude some popular materials and activities as unsuitable to them. Yet college students can learn more efficiently, because they have a greater emory storage capacity, a greater capacity for analytic reasoning and can develop a strong instrumental motivation. To them, the subject matter involved in the learning can be more abstract, serious, less playful but more formal, and, so far as the input is comprehensible, and at the appropriate level, they can be quite efficient classroom learners. All these differ from child learners’ needs, creating wholly different teaching plan.
2.2Students’ needs
Most of the students have learned English for more than six years with a vocabulary of about 2 500 words and superficial knowledge of grammar for many reasons. Some of them have jobs and even have quitted learning English for many years. English is mostly taught at middle schools using the traditional grammar-translation method, because of the exam-centered education system. This emphasis on examinations is due to the perception that results are superior to other qualifications in evaluating a teacher’s work. In order to cope with the demands of these exams, lessons are usually teacher-oriented, with teachers predominantly using Chinese to teach English. Therefore, students had little opportunities to accept a new teaching method. They want to obtain more knowledge of grammar in order to understand and use the target language correctly and effectively.
3Constructive thinking of grammar teaching
3.1Rationales
Designers should not forget the findings in language learning that learners, adults or children, share a similar language acquisition sequence. Teachers should work with such a process rather than against it. Thus, the theoretical basis of the design of a grammar class is supposed to include the following elements.
3.2Teaching methodology —— traditional and communicative
approach
Teaching methods influence the result that produces in classroom teaching. Traditional ways in Chinese classroom teaching have been questioned and new approaches are being tried. Grammar should be taught in a context, not rules and structures alone. Penny Ur(1988)suggests that: “When we teach grammar, we are —— or should be —— getting the learners to learn quite a number of different, though related, bits of knowledge and skills: how to recognize the examples of structure, how to produce the form, how to understand its meaning in context, and produce meaningful sentences using it themselves.”
As described above, grammar should be taught and practiced as a means of communication, rather than as a means of correcting the accuracy of individual sentences. Learners should be taught how to form correct structures and also their functions, as the first step towards meaningful communication. Learners should have a reason to use the information given in an exercise. Grammar should be best introduced through a traditional approach. Then, once students have a fairly thorough understanding of the grammar point, they are gently led into some communicative activities that allow them to demonstrate and consolidate their knowledge of that grammar point. In this way the communicative approach is not intended as a replacement for the traditional one, but as a supplement to it.
3.3Psychological basis —— Humanistic psychology
This theory initiates the full development of individual potential and realization of self-value. It proposes that a friendly and harmonious environment is the premise to satisfy the needs of both teachers and learners. S. P. Corder, a famous applied linguist, has pointed out that language teachers actually cannot teach a language to students, what they can do is to create a harmonious language-learning environment for them.
3.4Center of the grammar class —— Learners and learning
Since learners are the cores of the learning and learning is the process to achieve learners’ target, the grammar class is to focus primarily on both the learners and the learning. It is both learner-centered and learning-centered and the learners’ autonomy is to be emphasized.
4The principles and aims of the teaching plan
A teacher should prepare his/her lesson sufficiently, explain clearly and use various teaching aids to stimulate the students’ interest. Good classroom control should be maintained and the teaching content should not only be presented theoretically but also put into practice.
At the same time, the students should be more relaxed, increasing the effectiveness of their study. They should be encouraged to participate and interact closely both with their classmates and the teacher. An environment should be created where they feel free to express their ideas without inhibition. So the aims are:
A.To provide students with opportunities to develop their language use.
B.To raise awareness of the communicative approach to grammar.
C.To get the students to study grammar using the communicative approach.
4.1Teaching content: the basic usages of infinitive
4.2The objectives
D.To give the students practice in the use of the basic usages of infinitive
E.To understand the principles of communicative approach, deduction and induction to grammar.
4.3Teaching Procedure
Step One: Warming-up Activities(2 minutes)
Greetings: Good morning, everyone! How are you today?
We learned Auxiliaries in chapter 18 last time. This morning we’ll learn Chapter 19 —— Non-finite Verb. Did you preview this chapter before class?Did you find any difference from what you had learned in the middle school?
Comments: Some students may say “yes” and some may say “no”. No matter what answers will be, teachers should get some information about the students. As mentioned before, there are some differences between A Practical English Grammar written by professor Zhang Daozhen and our textbook —— An English Grammar for General Readers written by professor Zhang Zhenbang
Introduction: Finite verb and non-finite verb
Verb can be classified as finite-verb and non-finite verb according to its
changes in person and number. Finite-verb is subjected to its subject’s person and number while non-finite verb is not. Non-finite verb includes infinitive, participle(present and past participle) and gerund. And now we’ll learn the basic usages of infinitive on page 380 of your textbook.
Step two: The basic usages of infinitive(8 minutes)
The sentence functions of infinitive can be used as subject, predicative, object, attributive, adverbial, subjective complement and objective complement of a sentence. Let’s see the following sentences. Please pay attention to the underlined parts.
A.His plan is to spend a few days in the mountains.
B.Lei Feng’s only desire was to be useful to the people and the country.
C.To make a decision without knowing all facts is difficult.
D.It’s necessary for us to master a foreign language.
E.She began to learn French at the age of twelve.
F.What do you plan to do tomorrow?
G.Perhaps this would be a good chance to go to Hainan.
H.She was the only one to look after the child.
I.In 1918 he went to Japan to study medical science.
J.The girls jumped with joy to hear the news.
L.He asked you to call him back at 11 o’clock.
M.Please remind me to take my medicine tomorrow.
Step three: Questions(5 minutes)
A.Can you tell me the sentence functions of infinitive in the above sentences?
B.Ask one or two students to answer the question.
C.Comments on the students’ answers.
Step four: Summing-up(15 minutes)
A.the infinitive in sentences A and B is used as predicative.
B.the infinitive in sentences C and D is used as subjects. Please pay attention to the different sentence patterns.
C.the infinitive in sentences E and F is used as objects. Note:The infinitive used as object is often cited behind transitive verb. The following verbs often have infinitive as their objects, such as want, like, wish, hate, start, forget, pretend, decide, expect etc.
D.the infinitive in sentences G and H is used as attributive. The infinitive used as attributive is often cited behind the noun or pronoun it modifies.
E.The infinitive in sentences is used as adverbial, expressing purpose and cause respectively. Besides when infinitive is used as adverbial, it can also express result and degree.
e.g. He lifted a rock only to drop it on his own feet.
(result)
Mary wouldn’t be so careless as to forget her key.
(degree)
F.the infinitive in sentences L and M is used as objective complement. But if sentence L is changed into passive voice, its infinitive is subjective complement.
e.g. You are asked to call him back at 11 o’clock.
Furthermore, the following verbs may have infinitive as their objective complement, such as:tell, order, invite, force, allow, expect, encourage, advise, permit, persuade etc. The following verbs may have infinitive without “to” as their compound objects, such as:make, have, let, see, hear, watch, notice etc.
e.g. Did you notice him leave the house?
I often hear her sing in her room.
If the sentences above are changed into passive voice, the objective complements in original sentences have become subjective complement, “to” can not be omitted.
e.g. Was he noticed to leave the house?
She is often heard to sing in her room.
Step five: Classroom Activity(8 minutes)
Direction: Identify the usages of Infinitive in the following sentences.
A.Mrs. Brown made me stay in New York for two more weeks.
B.Go in quietly so as not to wake up the baby.
C.A few years later she came home to find that her hometown had greatly changed.
D.She usually has a lot of meetings to attend in the evenings.
E.I like to go for walks in the warm sunshine.
F.Her wish is to marry an honest man.
G.It’s important to make a plan for our future.
H.The old man sat down to have a rest.
(Walk around to find out if the students have any questions to ask and be ready to answer or explain)
Step six: Homework(2 minutes)
A.Review what we have learned in this period after class.
B.Discuss the basic usages of infinitive with your classmates.
C.Do the exercises on page 387.
5Conclusion
The learning activities based on this design turn out to be effective, but it seems a little time-consuming. Many teachers only adopted approaches of deducing and inducing when teaching English grammar in the past decades. It was helpful in language learning. But I think the traditional approaches are not the most effective ones, especially in stimulating the students’ interest, motivation and tactics in language learning. Comprehensive ways of grammar teaching makes the students more active in class and understand what they learn more thoroughly.
References
1 David, N. “Communicative language teaching: Making it works”[J]. ELT Journal, 41/2, 1987
2 Jeremy, H. The practice of English language Teaching[M]. Longman Ltd, 1983
3 Liu Longxi. “Designing A Grammar Workshop”[J]. Teaching English in China, Vol.26 No.2, 2003
4 Susan, H. Grammar Matters[M]. CITL, 1993
5 Xia Jimei. Foreign Language Course Design Modern Theory & Practice [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2003
6 Zou Xiandao. “Planning A Language Programme”[J]. Teaching English in China, Vol.25 No.3, 2002
7 Zhang Daozhen. A practical English Grammar [M]. Commercial Press, 1979
8 Zhang Zhenbang. An English Grammar for General Readers [M]. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2001
Constructive Thinking of English Grammar Teaching in Vocational College
—— Take Infinitive as an example
Liang Guichun
Abstract: Deduction and induction are mostly adopted in traditional grammar teaching. Traditional approaches of grammar teaching are beaten by modern teaching ones. Desalinizing grammar teaching is an unavoidable trend in modern English teaching. This paper tries to put forward some constructive thinking on the basis of actual situations of vocational students, taking Infinitive teaching as an example.
Key words: Vocational College; grammar teaching; constructive thinking
关键词:高职院校;语法教学;构想
中图分类号:G642 文献标识码:A 文章编号:1000-8136(2009)33-0089-03
1Introduction
Recent developments in language teaching have left many doubting about how to teach grammar. How to teach it effectively and meaningfully is the problem we face. The traditional ways of grammar teaching has been beaten by the communicative approaches. But they still have some instructive meanings. In designing a language class, one of the first things is to identify the influential factors that have to be taken account. At least the designer should consider the features unique to the learning of a language. Learning a language well always means the use of ears, mouth, hands, brain, etc. as well as the eyes. This will mean significant adjustment of a learning class involving a lot of contents including the materials and the activities. And this is one of the reasons why modern language classes are usually all communicative, with very rare exceptions. From his experience, the writer finds that the traditional ways of grammar teaching such as deduction and induction are still instructive. Thus,he wants to try a comprehensive way to teach English grammar. This paper tries to introduce a comprehensive approach of teaching English rammar in context instead of in isolation.
2The students’ background
2.1Features of students in vocational college
If a language class is communicative, it is then basically learner-centered. Therefore most of the influential factors in the designing of such a class will be very much related to or decided by the nature and need of the learners in question.
A language-teaching plan may be viewed as the teachers’ main guidelines, but it is the students who are set to benefit. Therefore when planning a class, first one has to learn about the learners, who the learners are and what they do. Research has shown the differences between college students and child language learners, which must be considered in the planning of a language class. Some experts summaries 10 characteristics of college language learners, which may serve as a guide for the class planning. College students, for instance, are more likely to be learning rather than acquiring a new language, and this feature should exclude some popular materials and activities as unsuitable to them. Yet college students can learn more efficiently, because they have a greater emory storage capacity, a greater capacity for analytic reasoning and can develop a strong instrumental motivation. To them, the subject matter involved in the learning can be more abstract, serious, less playful but more formal, and, so far as the input is comprehensible, and at the appropriate level, they can be quite efficient classroom learners. All these differ from child learners’ needs, creating wholly different teaching plan.
2.2Students’ needs
Most of the students have learned English for more than six years with a vocabulary of about 2 500 words and superficial knowledge of grammar for many reasons. Some of them have jobs and even have quitted learning English for many years. English is mostly taught at middle schools using the traditional grammar-translation method, because of the exam-centered education system. This emphasis on examinations is due to the perception that results are superior to other qualifications in evaluating a teacher’s work. In order to cope with the demands of these exams, lessons are usually teacher-oriented, with teachers predominantly using Chinese to teach English. Therefore, students had little opportunities to accept a new teaching method. They want to obtain more knowledge of grammar in order to understand and use the target language correctly and effectively.
3Constructive thinking of grammar teaching
3.1Rationales
Designers should not forget the findings in language learning that learners, adults or children, share a similar language acquisition sequence. Teachers should work with such a process rather than against it. Thus, the theoretical basis of the design of a grammar class is supposed to include the following elements.
3.2Teaching methodology —— traditional and communicative
approach
Teaching methods influence the result that produces in classroom teaching. Traditional ways in Chinese classroom teaching have been questioned and new approaches are being tried. Grammar should be taught in a context, not rules and structures alone. Penny Ur(1988)suggests that: “When we teach grammar, we are —— or should be —— getting the learners to learn quite a number of different, though related, bits of knowledge and skills: how to recognize the examples of structure, how to produce the form, how to understand its meaning in context, and produce meaningful sentences using it themselves.”
As described above, grammar should be taught and practiced as a means of communication, rather than as a means of correcting the accuracy of individual sentences. Learners should be taught how to form correct structures and also their functions, as the first step towards meaningful communication. Learners should have a reason to use the information given in an exercise. Grammar should be best introduced through a traditional approach. Then, once students have a fairly thorough understanding of the grammar point, they are gently led into some communicative activities that allow them to demonstrate and consolidate their knowledge of that grammar point. In this way the communicative approach is not intended as a replacement for the traditional one, but as a supplement to it.
3.3Psychological basis —— Humanistic psychology
This theory initiates the full development of individual potential and realization of self-value. It proposes that a friendly and harmonious environment is the premise to satisfy the needs of both teachers and learners. S. P. Corder, a famous applied linguist, has pointed out that language teachers actually cannot teach a language to students, what they can do is to create a harmonious language-learning environment for them.
3.4Center of the grammar class —— Learners and learning
Since learners are the cores of the learning and learning is the process to achieve learners’ target, the grammar class is to focus primarily on both the learners and the learning. It is both learner-centered and learning-centered and the learners’ autonomy is to be emphasized.
4The principles and aims of the teaching plan
A teacher should prepare his/her lesson sufficiently, explain clearly and use various teaching aids to stimulate the students’ interest. Good classroom control should be maintained and the teaching content should not only be presented theoretically but also put into practice.
At the same time, the students should be more relaxed, increasing the effectiveness of their study. They should be encouraged to participate and interact closely both with their classmates and the teacher. An environment should be created where they feel free to express their ideas without inhibition. So the aims are:
A.To provide students with opportunities to develop their language use.
B.To raise awareness of the communicative approach to grammar.
C.To get the students to study grammar using the communicative approach.
4.1Teaching content: the basic usages of infinitive
4.2The objectives
D.To give the students practice in the use of the basic usages of infinitive
E.To understand the principles of communicative approach, deduction and induction to grammar.
4.3Teaching Procedure
Step One: Warming-up Activities(2 minutes)
Greetings: Good morning, everyone! How are you today?
We learned Auxiliaries in chapter 18 last time. This morning we’ll learn Chapter 19 —— Non-finite Verb. Did you preview this chapter before class?Did you find any difference from what you had learned in the middle school?
Comments: Some students may say “yes” and some may say “no”. No matter what answers will be, teachers should get some information about the students. As mentioned before, there are some differences between A Practical English Grammar written by professor Zhang Daozhen and our textbook —— An English Grammar for General Readers written by professor Zhang Zhenbang
Introduction: Finite verb and non-finite verb
Verb can be classified as finite-verb and non-finite verb according to its
changes in person and number. Finite-verb is subjected to its subject’s person and number while non-finite verb is not. Non-finite verb includes infinitive, participle(present and past participle) and gerund. And now we’ll learn the basic usages of infinitive on page 380 of your textbook.
Step two: The basic usages of infinitive(8 minutes)
The sentence functions of infinitive can be used as subject, predicative, object, attributive, adverbial, subjective complement and objective complement of a sentence. Let’s see the following sentences. Please pay attention to the underlined parts.
A.His plan is to spend a few days in the mountains.
B.Lei Feng’s only desire was to be useful to the people and the country.
C.To make a decision without knowing all facts is difficult.
D.It’s necessary for us to master a foreign language.
E.She began to learn French at the age of twelve.
F.What do you plan to do tomorrow?
G.Perhaps this would be a good chance to go to Hainan.
H.She was the only one to look after the child.
I.In 1918 he went to Japan to study medical science.
J.The girls jumped with joy to hear the news.
L.He asked you to call him back at 11 o’clock.
M.Please remind me to take my medicine tomorrow.
Step three: Questions(5 minutes)
A.Can you tell me the sentence functions of infinitive in the above sentences?
B.Ask one or two students to answer the question.
C.Comments on the students’ answers.
Step four: Summing-up(15 minutes)
A.the infinitive in sentences A and B is used as predicative.
B.the infinitive in sentences C and D is used as subjects. Please pay attention to the different sentence patterns.
C.the infinitive in sentences E and F is used as objects. Note:The infinitive used as object is often cited behind transitive verb. The following verbs often have infinitive as their objects, such as want, like, wish, hate, start, forget, pretend, decide, expect etc.
D.the infinitive in sentences G and H is used as attributive. The infinitive used as attributive is often cited behind the noun or pronoun it modifies.
E.The infinitive in sentences is used as adverbial, expressing purpose and cause respectively. Besides when infinitive is used as adverbial, it can also express result and degree.
e.g. He lifted a rock only to drop it on his own feet.
(result)
Mary wouldn’t be so careless as to forget her key.
(degree)
F.the infinitive in sentences L and M is used as objective complement. But if sentence L is changed into passive voice, its infinitive is subjective complement.
e.g. You are asked to call him back at 11 o’clock.
Furthermore, the following verbs may have infinitive as their objective complement, such as:tell, order, invite, force, allow, expect, encourage, advise, permit, persuade etc. The following verbs may have infinitive without “to” as their compound objects, such as:make, have, let, see, hear, watch, notice etc.
e.g. Did you notice him leave the house?
I often hear her sing in her room.
If the sentences above are changed into passive voice, the objective complements in original sentences have become subjective complement, “to” can not be omitted.
e.g. Was he noticed to leave the house?
She is often heard to sing in her room.
Step five: Classroom Activity(8 minutes)
Direction: Identify the usages of Infinitive in the following sentences.
A.Mrs. Brown made me stay in New York for two more weeks.
B.Go in quietly so as not to wake up the baby.
C.A few years later she came home to find that her hometown had greatly changed.
D.She usually has a lot of meetings to attend in the evenings.
E.I like to go for walks in the warm sunshine.
F.Her wish is to marry an honest man.
G.It’s important to make a plan for our future.
H.The old man sat down to have a rest.
(Walk around to find out if the students have any questions to ask and be ready to answer or explain)
Step six: Homework(2 minutes)
A.Review what we have learned in this period after class.
B.Discuss the basic usages of infinitive with your classmates.
C.Do the exercises on page 387.
5Conclusion
The learning activities based on this design turn out to be effective, but it seems a little time-consuming. Many teachers only adopted approaches of deducing and inducing when teaching English grammar in the past decades. It was helpful in language learning. But I think the traditional approaches are not the most effective ones, especially in stimulating the students’ interest, motivation and tactics in language learning. Comprehensive ways of grammar teaching makes the students more active in class and understand what they learn more thoroughly.
References
1 David, N. “Communicative language teaching: Making it works”[J]. ELT Journal, 41/2, 1987
2 Jeremy, H. The practice of English language Teaching[M]. Longman Ltd, 1983
3 Liu Longxi. “Designing A Grammar Workshop”[J]. Teaching English in China, Vol.26 No.2, 2003
4 Susan, H. Grammar Matters[M]. CITL, 1993
5 Xia Jimei. Foreign Language Course Design Modern Theory & Practice [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2003
6 Zou Xiandao. “Planning A Language Programme”[J]. Teaching English in China, Vol.25 No.3, 2002
7 Zhang Daozhen. A practical English Grammar [M]. Commercial Press, 1979
8 Zhang Zhenbang. An English Grammar for General Readers [M]. Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2001
Constructive Thinking of English Grammar Teaching in Vocational College
—— Take Infinitive as an example
Liang Guichun
Abstract: Deduction and induction are mostly adopted in traditional grammar teaching. Traditional approaches of grammar teaching are beaten by modern teaching ones. Desalinizing grammar teaching is an unavoidable trend in modern English teaching. This paper tries to put forward some constructive thinking on the basis of actual situations of vocational students, taking Infinitive teaching as an example.
Key words: Vocational College; grammar teaching; constructive thinking