A Study Of English Grammar Teaching In High Schools: A Perspective Of Construction Grammar

Grammar teaching is an important component of foreign language teaching. Traditional grammar teaching overemphasizes the instruction and learning of grammatical rules and ignores the semantic meaning of the form and the pairing of the form and the meaning. Since the 1980s, with the development of Communicative Approach, grammar teaching goes to another extreme. The Communicative Approach stresses the cultivation of students'communicative abilities and doesn't pay enough attention to grammar teaching. Because of the ignorance of the accuracy of language, students'abilities of grammar use decline. The practice proves that grammar teaching is an important component of language teaching, and it can't be ignored in English teaching in high schools. However, what to teach and how to teach is a problem which is worth deeply exploring.In recent years, construction grammar is a hot issue in language and linguistics research. It pays attention to a pairing of form and meaning/function and also stresses the viewpoint of constructional acquisition based on generalization. These ideas deepen our understanding of grammatical attributes and provide a new perspective for English grammar teaching.Based on the observation of 30 videos of English classroom teaching in high schools, this thesis studies the current situation of English grammar teaching in high schools and finds out the existing problems of grammar teaching. These problems include that not enough attention has been paid on grammar teaching; the methods of grammar teaching are simplistic; grammar teaching is carried out without enough context; the practice around the grammar items is not enough; much attention is paid to the form instead of the meaning or their combination.We intend to solve the problems of grammar teaching that we have found within the theory of construction grammar. From the perspective of construction grammar, the teaching contents of English grammar teaching in high schools should include both morphology and syntax of traditional grammar and form and meaning/function. The teaching methods of English grammar in high schools should follow the principles: teaching grammar from the simple construction to the complex construction; teaching grammar from instances of construction to the schematic construction, and then to instances of construction; paying equal attention to form and meaning of constructions.