A Study On The Application Of Communicative Approach To English Grammar Teaching In Senior High School

Traditional grammar concept defines grammar as a system of knowledge or rules; therefore, the traditional grammar teaching usually follows the teacher-centered approach. The teacher explains the rules of the grammar while students just make some notes, and do mechanical sentence pattern drills, thus students can not apply what they know to produce spontaneous speech. In the dull and boring atmosphere, the teaching effect is not satisfying. This kind of grammar teaching makes students feel bored and less interested.With the development of linguistics, psychology and pedagogy, grammar is also endowed with a new meaning. Grammar is a description of the structure of a language and the way in which linguistic units such as words and phrases are combined to produce sentences in the language. It usually takes into account the meanings and functions these sentences have in the overall system of the language. That is, grammar is the combination of form, meaning and usage. This new grammar concept requires that grammar teaching should take language function into consideration as well as language form. The same grammar structures can obtain different explanations in different contexts, therefore, the classroom teaching for grammar may adopt student-centered approach, and teachers design various kinds of teaching activities to help students learn grammar in communicative circumstances. Teachers not only help students grasp the right form of language, but make students know how to use these forms correctly, when, where, and to whom, what kind of language expression is more accurate and more polite.Communicative approach advocates student-centered, fostering students’ interests and enthusiasm for language learning through different kinds of teaching activities, fostering students’ language learning ability. Some teachers wrongly think of communicative approach excludes grammar teaching, however, as a matter of fact, some famous researchers of communicative approach have already stated clearly that significance of grammatical knowledge as an indispensable component of communicative competence can not be neglected. The ultimate goal of grammar teaching is to help students develop their language communicative competence, which is also the aim of communicative approach. The command of grammar knowledge can help students understand the language better; and more efficiently communicate with people. Therefore, communicative grammar teaching which is an important complement has certain value for study.This study is undertaken to find out the feasibility and validity of the application of communicative approach to Senior High School grammar teaching. Contrastive groups are adopted in this study, with questionnaires, grammar proficiency tests and oral test as the methods of collecting data. The subjects of the study are78senior high school students,40subjects in the experimental group who receive communicative grammar teaching;38subjects in the controlled group who receive traditional grammar-translation method. The study lasts a semester. Through analysis of the data obtained from pre-test and post-test with the help of statistics software SPSS, the results show that communicative grammar teaching plays a positive role in improving the motivation for English learning and lowering the anxiety for English learning. According to the data analysis of pre-test and post-test, the teaching effect of communicative grammar teaching is not the same as grammar translation method. Although two methods can both improve students’ grammar proficiency, the scores in experimental class are higher than that in control class. This shows that students in an active and non-anxious atmosphere learn grammar better than those in traditional teachers’ explanation and passive acceptance. Communicative abilities in experimental class are better than those in control class, which means applying communicative grammar teaching is more facilitative in promoting students’ communicative competence than traditional grammar translation method.The significance of this study is as follows. Firstly, this study proves the feasibility and validity of the application of communicative approach to Senior High School grammar teaching. Secondly, grammar teaching is not only to teach grammar knowledge, but to train abilities. Thirdly, this study has implications for exploring a scientific and reasonable grammar teaching method to improve grammar teaching level and exert the value of grammar teaching. Of course, this study has its own limitations because of insufficient time and all kinds of objective factors.