Teaching Grammar In The Communicative Classroom

Whether grammar should be taught or not has been debated continuously in the field of SLA (second language acquisition) and applied linguistics. Under the influence of the debate, the status of grammar teaching changes dramatically, from the dominant position in Grammar-Translation Method to the zero position in strong CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) version in 1980s. In recent years the importance of grammar in language teaching was reconsidered. To develop the communicative competence is the goal of CLT and as an inseparable component of communicative competence grammatical competence should not be ignored, so one of the current concerns of applied linguists is centered on the most effective way of grammar teaching in the communicative classroom. The paper tries to propose an effective way of grammar teaching in the communicative classroom in the EFL (English as a foreign language) setting in China.'Focus on form', which suggests that attention to form should be encouraged in communicative second language classrooms, has aroused an increasing interest in the field of second language pedagogy. However, no systematic explicit grammar instruction is included in'focus on form'instruction. On the basis of the characteristics of the EFL setting in China, two patterns of grammar teaching, which are divided into inductive and deductive approaches, are advocated as the adapting of'focus on form'from ESL (English as a second language) setting to EFL setting. In the two patterns which are based on a study of the needs of learners and teachers, a systematic explicit grammar instruction by the teacher is combined with task-based language teaching.An experiment focusing on the past simple tense in English grammar was done to test the effect of the two patterns. The experiment was carried out in an ordinary classroom of Junior One in Weifang No.1 Middle School. Two classes were involved in the research. One class was the control class, in which English past simple tense was taught through'focus on form'instruction, while the other was the experimental class, in which'focus on form'instruction was added with systematic explicit grammar instruction. The statistical results showed the prestige of the adapted approach over the un-adapted one. That is to say systematic explicit grammar instruction can be regarded as a pedagogical choice of grammar teaching in the communicative classroom in China.This study has had some implications to grammar teaching. Principally, traditional methods may not be exclusive to some new approaches in grammar teaching; what is crucial is that we must try to find a suitable way to combine them for the best results and try to find a pedagogically sound and empirically grounded position for grammar in the communicative classroom in China.