Integrating Grammar Teaching With Communicative Approaches: Analyzing Writing Samples

The teaching of English grammar has a long history and has provided an extensive arena for controversies and methodological discussions concerning language teaching. How to carry out a more effective grammar teaching in primary English education is still a problem faced by language educators all over our country. There are two obvious shortcomings in traditional Chinese English classes: One, grammar-centered classes focus too much on English grammar explanation, pattern exercises and recitation of English grammar rules which leads students to a passive way to accept knowledge and makes students lose interest in English without communicative ability; Two, although Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has affected foreign language teaching in China, it ignores the need for language accuracy by avoiding much English grammar teaching. The author tries to optimize grammar teaching in primary English education by discussing the advantages of integrating grammar teaching with communicative language teaching on the basis of students'writing samples.This thesis examines the background and main characteristics of grammar teaching and CLT, and discusses the necessity of grammar teaching in the communicative method, specifically explaining the necessity of employing CLT with grammar teaching at the primary level of English teaching. Grammatical rules are structures people must observe when they speak and write. Grammatical competence should be transformed into communicative competence and serve to convey the communicative aim. A summary of theoretical framework is displayed for Integrating Grammar Teaching with communicative approaches. The author chose four classes from Sino-American Primary English Training School as samples for research. According to the characteristics of language teaching in this school, the author divided the four classes into three categories: the first category was the students who took part in the New Concept Classes which were grammar-centered; the second was the students who attended Speaking Classes which adopted Communicative Language Teaching; the third was the students who not only joined New Concept Classes but also Speaking Classes. And Integration of Grammar Teaching and Communicative Language Teaching was adopted in this group. A foreign teacher helped the author score all the compositions written by the students in these three categories. A careful analysis of the statistic data via SPSS 11.5 was conducted, the statistics results show that integrating grammar teaching with communicative language teaching is significantly the superior method over each of the other two. Moreover, the author points out the implications and limitations of these different methods, and gives directions for future research.