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Abstract:The thesis talks about the importance of grammar teaching in the CLT base on the adoption of the CLT in China.
Key words:the Communicative Language Teaching English Language Teaching Grammar teaching
Ⅰ.Introduction
The Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) is an innovation in English Language Teaching (ELT). The CLT focuses on students’ communicative competence and ability of using language in communication, insists that speaking activity in classroom is an instance of real communicative situation.
The CLT indeed has contributed a lot to China’s English Teaching. However, some English teachers still have misconceptions, by which they ignore the importance of grammar teaching.
Ⅱ.History Review in China
As for china, our education system called for the adoption of the CLT in the early 1990s.The reason for the adoption is the unsatisfactory teaching results of the traditional “grammar-oriented” method.
Early in 1981, China’s SEDC issued the national unified syllabu(for middle school’s English teaching),which was structure-based and set language knowledge as the main teaching goal in order for students to "lay a solid foundation for further studies". As a result, it caused the unsatisfied teaching result：the students became almost “deaf and dumb” because their lack of listening and speaking practices, that is, the so-called “Mute English”.
In 1993, SEDC republished the New Syllabus, in which the fostering of communicative language was required in English teaching classroom in middle schools. The purpose is to improve the students’ communicative competence, and to change the situation of the unsatisfactory teaching results. The CLT began to be widely adopted in the middle schools after that, and the teachers have their communicative teaching with great enthusiasm.
Ⅲ.Problems and Discussions
However, the enthusiasm about the introduction of the CLT into China also caused problems：some teachers’ blind acceptance and application results in the typical pendulum effect which influences the efficiency of ELT. Those teachers take for granted that teaching communicatively is to weaken the grammar teaching or even throw it away.
As it is known, the function of language is to communicate, thus the purpose of the ELT should focus on fostering the students’ communicative competence which consists of four parts：Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. The students can speak English fluently, but for their writing, there are a lot of mistakes，which also brings passive effect on the efficiency of the communicative language teaching- the Extreme Pendulum.
Therefore, language teachers should have a clear view on the role of grammar teaching in ELT: the first question is-What is grammar?Michael Swan pointed out: "Grammar may be roughly defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words in order to form longer units of meaning." This means，grammar is the basic of forming a language, no one can use words to form a series of sentences or paragraphs in written or spoken language unless he knows how they should be put together.We must realize that grammar knowledge is a component of communicative competence, communication can’t be carried out without any basic grammar rules.
Those teachers who have a misconception about the adoption of the CLT think that "communication makes perfect", they insist that daily communicative drill is enough and perfect and suggest that the students learn everything from their language acquisition. Undoubtedly, it is usually true that we need practice in any language learning, but communication practice is not all, only language acquisition is far from enough, both acquisition and learning is needed in the students’ language study. The students can’t summarize all the grammar rules from the daily communication drills.
It is necessary to teach grammar and other fundamentals： “There is no doubt that a knowledge implicit or explicit ：of grammatical rules is essential for the mastery of a language”.
The problem we have to solve is how to combine grammar teaching to the CLT?
Ready-made grammar rules should be taught directly or indirectly when it is necessary.Generally speaking, there are two kinds of ways of teaching：implicit grammatical instruction and explicit grammatical instruction. Both are designed on the psycholinguistic perspective of the relationship between language learning and language acquisition. The former one focuses on training the students’ ability on noticing and processing linguistic structures involved in the communicative contexts they have got, that is, the teacher does not talk about the grammar points in the communicative context overtly but try to make the students get to realize the grammatical structure by themselves. By doing this, the teacher can find a equilibrium between the communicative teaching and grammar teaching in order to foster both the students’ communicative competence and language analyzing competence. On the other hand, the students can’t summarize all the grammar rules by themselves, thus, explicit grammatical instruction is needed.
The suggestion is that, the teachers may teach grammar in or not in the communicative drills according to different psychological period of the students’ learning.The reason of doing this is that the process of language learning has a very relation with the students’ psychological situation and age. In terms of the students’ psychology of the adolescent and the psychological development process, we should notice this：For junior school students, too much mechanical grammar practice will be unacceptable. They need to learn or to be familiar with it in their communicative practices; for senior school students, they need to summarize the grammatical knowledge learned before and improve their language competence to a higher level.
Ⅳ.Conclusion
The CLT is not to abandon the grammar teaching but to teach the students to use language to communicate based on the grammar knowledge acquired directly or indirectly.
References:
[1]Michael Swan ．Grammar Practice Activities． Cambridge University Press, 1990．
[2]Liu Shoulan
Key words:the Communicative Language Teaching English Language Teaching Grammar teaching
Ⅰ.Introduction
The Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) is an innovation in English Language Teaching (ELT). The CLT focuses on students’ communicative competence and ability of using language in communication, insists that speaking activity in classroom is an instance of real communicative situation.
The CLT indeed has contributed a lot to China’s English Teaching. However, some English teachers still have misconceptions, by which they ignore the importance of grammar teaching.
Ⅱ.History Review in China
As for china, our education system called for the adoption of the CLT in the early 1990s.The reason for the adoption is the unsatisfactory teaching results of the traditional “grammar-oriented” method.
Early in 1981, China’s SEDC issued the national unified syllabu(for middle school’s English teaching),which was structure-based and set language knowledge as the main teaching goal in order for students to "lay a solid foundation for further studies". As a result, it caused the unsatisfied teaching result：the students became almost “deaf and dumb” because their lack of listening and speaking practices, that is, the so-called “Mute English”.
In 1993, SEDC republished the New Syllabus, in which the fostering of communicative language was required in English teaching classroom in middle schools. The purpose is to improve the students’ communicative competence, and to change the situation of the unsatisfactory teaching results. The CLT began to be widely adopted in the middle schools after that, and the teachers have their communicative teaching with great enthusiasm.
Ⅲ.Problems and Discussions
However, the enthusiasm about the introduction of the CLT into China also caused problems：some teachers’ blind acceptance and application results in the typical pendulum effect which influences the efficiency of ELT. Those teachers take for granted that teaching communicatively is to weaken the grammar teaching or even throw it away.
As it is known, the function of language is to communicate, thus the purpose of the ELT should focus on fostering the students’ communicative competence which consists of four parts：Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. The students can speak English fluently, but for their writing, there are a lot of mistakes，which also brings passive effect on the efficiency of the communicative language teaching- the Extreme Pendulum.
Therefore, language teachers should have a clear view on the role of grammar teaching in ELT: the first question is-What is grammar?Michael Swan pointed out: "Grammar may be roughly defined as the way a language manipulates and combines words in order to form longer units of meaning." This means，grammar is the basic of forming a language, no one can use words to form a series of sentences or paragraphs in written or spoken language unless he knows how they should be put together.We must realize that grammar knowledge is a component of communicative competence, communication can’t be carried out without any basic grammar rules.
Those teachers who have a misconception about the adoption of the CLT think that "communication makes perfect", they insist that daily communicative drill is enough and perfect and suggest that the students learn everything from their language acquisition. Undoubtedly, it is usually true that we need practice in any language learning, but communication practice is not all, only language acquisition is far from enough, both acquisition and learning is needed in the students’ language study. The students can’t summarize all the grammar rules from the daily communication drills.
It is necessary to teach grammar and other fundamentals： “There is no doubt that a knowledge implicit or explicit ：of grammatical rules is essential for the mastery of a language”.
The problem we have to solve is how to combine grammar teaching to the CLT?
Ready-made grammar rules should be taught directly or indirectly when it is necessary.Generally speaking, there are two kinds of ways of teaching：implicit grammatical instruction and explicit grammatical instruction. Both are designed on the psycholinguistic perspective of the relationship between language learning and language acquisition. The former one focuses on training the students’ ability on noticing and processing linguistic structures involved in the communicative contexts they have got, that is, the teacher does not talk about the grammar points in the communicative context overtly but try to make the students get to realize the grammatical structure by themselves. By doing this, the teacher can find a equilibrium between the communicative teaching and grammar teaching in order to foster both the students’ communicative competence and language analyzing competence. On the other hand, the students can’t summarize all the grammar rules by themselves, thus, explicit grammatical instruction is needed.
The suggestion is that, the teachers may teach grammar in or not in the communicative drills according to different psychological period of the students’ learning.The reason of doing this is that the process of language learning has a very relation with the students’ psychological situation and age. In terms of the students’ psychology of the adolescent and the psychological development process, we should notice this：For junior school students, too much mechanical grammar practice will be unacceptable. They need to learn or to be familiar with it in their communicative practices; for senior school students, they need to summarize the grammatical knowledge learned before and improve their language competence to a higher level.
Ⅳ.Conclusion
The CLT is not to abandon the grammar teaching but to teach the students to use language to communicate based on the grammar knowledge acquired directly or indirectly.
References:
[1]Michael Swan ．Grammar Practice Activities． Cambridge University Press, 1990．
[2]Liu Shoulan