On the Teaching Methods of English Grammar in Middle School.doc

中学英语语法教学On the Teaching Methods of English Grammar in Middle SchoolAbstract: The term paper is concerned with the debate at home and abroad, that is, whether the students should learn English grammar and what kinds of teaching methods teachers should adopt. By analyzing the English grammar viewpoints of foreign English teaching schools and present situations of English grammar teaching in China, and connecting the Understanding Second Language Acquisition to the format of final examination of English, the author draw a conclusion that learning English grammar is of importance. By digging into the advantages and disadvantages of traditional English grammar teaching methods, the author presents her English grammar teaching methods.Key words: grammar; grammar teaching; English in middle school摘 要：这篇文章是关于国内外都一直在讨论的话题：学生是否应该学习英语语法以及教师应该用什么方法来教授英语语法。通过分析国外英语教学流派的语法教学观念和我国英语语法教学的现状，结合二语习得理论和高考题型来阐述英语语法学习的重要性以及传统英语语法教学方法的利与弊,并提出自己的英语语法教学方法。关 键 字：语法； 语法教学；中学英语 ContentsI. Several Definitions of Grammar .1II. The Debate on English Grammar in Present Situation.1III. The Historical Development of English Grammar .2.The Theoretical and Practical Meaning for Us to Learn English Grammar.3A. The theoretical meaning for us to learn English grammar.3B. The practical meaning for us to learn English grammar.3.The Methods We Should Apply to English Grammar Teaching .4A. The habit-formation theory.4B. The traditional methods of English grammar teaching.4C. Opinions about the methods of English grammar teaching .5 1. Role playing.5 2. Using pictures or information sheets.73. Using stories.84. Using conversations.95. Reciting passages.10. Conclusion.11Works Cited.11I. Several Definitions of GrammarGrammar may be roughly defined as the way language manipulates and combines words (or bits of words) in order to form longer units of meaning (David 2).Grammar is a description of the structure of a language and the way in which units such as words and phrases are combines to produce sentences in the language (David 2).Grammar is the way in which words change themselves and group together to make sentences. The grammar of a language is what happens to words when they become plural or negative, or what order is used when we make questions or join two clauses to make one sentences (David 2).In my opinion, grammar is just a rule which attributes to combining different word or word phrases to a meaningful sentence. All these sentences joining together form a meaningful discourse.II. The Debate on English Grammar in Present SituationWith the development of China, more and more parents realize that mastering foreign languages is of importance for people living in China. As is known to all, each language has its own rules which help people to combine different words into different phrases, and then into a sentence in order that we can communicate with each other. In English, we call these rules grammar. Without grammar, words hang together without any real meaning or sense. In order to be able to speak a language to some degree of proficiency and to be able to express what we really what to say, we need to have some grammatical knowledge. By teaching grammar, we not only give our students the means of expressing themselves, but we also fulfill their expectations of what learning a foreign language involves. From this point of view, we could make a conclusion that learning the grammar well is the way in which is related to convey ourselves. Even though we could interpret many evidences that we should learn English grammar, we still need more examples to prove it. Whether the English grammar should be taught in middle school or not and what the teaching methods we should adopt are worth being talked here. Just like what has been written on the A Course In English Language Teaching, “the value of grammar in foreign language teaching has been a focus of debate for decades and the focus of the debate has been: 1) the role of grammar in language teaching; 2) the methods in which grammar should be presented and practiced” (Wang 102).III. The Historical Development of English GrammarThe history of the debate can be found in a journal which can be paraphrased like this: issues on whether the teaching of English grammar should be taught and ever were debated intensely. In the history of English teaching in foreign countries, most foreign language teaching schools depended on their own system of theories and came up with different advocates to the foreign language teaching from different point of views which can be divided into three stages. The first stage, from traditional foreign language teaching theory ever laying predominately in Grammar-Translation Method, spoke highly of English grammar and looked upon grammar as the center of the teaching task, and then transferred into Audio-Lingual Method which preferred to the ability of listening and speaking. Although it did not work against English Grammar teaching, it mainly focused on teaching language rather than teaching knowledge of language. The second stage, also called Modern Grammar Translation, started from the Cognitive Approach to the Direct Method which did attribute to teaching grammar indirectly and mainly emphasized on making students deal with grammar rules by mastering the learning materials. It was considered that language was a controlled or arranged system which mainly described how common people learn foreign language by learning the rules and then mastered the grammar rules. The third was from the National Approach posed by Kristen and Terrell who proposed that Language Teaching should not involve in Grammar Teaching to the Communities Approach, which attributed to the concepts or functions being the centre of arranged teaching, however, it did not fight against Teaching Grammar completely in terms of theory. Grammar Teaching underwent ups and downs in the development and history of foreign language teaching. According to the analysis to perspectives of several foreign language teaching schools, we are able to draw a conclusion that the teaching of grammar should be done necessarily (Bai 28).IV. The Theoretical and Practical Meaning for Us to Learn English GrammarA. The theoretical meaning for us to learn English grammarChomsky thought that human beings are born with a language acquisition device which consists of set general principles. The core of grammar of a natural language agrees with the inborn set of general principles while the peripheral grammar cannot be governed by the language acquisition device. In researches into the second language process, people have found that second language learners usually acquire the core grammar of the teaching language and then the peripheral grammar. This is simply because the core grammar agrees with the inborn general principles and is much easier to learn. They also believe that the core grammar will facilitate the development of the learners Interlingua and will exert a positive influence on the acquisitions of the teaching language.B. The practical meaning for us to learn English grammarAs is known to all, English has become one of the major subjects in the final examination which students should take in middle school if they want to further their education in colleges or universities. In analyses of a piece of final test paper, we can draw a conclusion that the test paper usually consists of multiple choices, reading comprehension, correcting errors and writing which are closely related to grammar to some extent. For example, in multiple choices, we mainly focus on the structures of the sentences or the collocative forms between the verbs and prepositions or the conjunctions between the sentences. All these belong to one of the categories of the grammar. In the part of reading comprehension, the students are required to have a better understanding the whole context. As we know, the sentences are made up of a group of words which are combined by some rules (we call them grammar). In correction part, we mainly focus on testing the learners abilities to correct the errors, which are in terms of collocative forms errors or conjunction errors, the part of which is the best manifestos of how well youve mastered English grammar. In reading part, we should organize different words in a sentence, and then these sentences are jointed together to form a composition or an article. That is how we organize different words into a sentence with the help of the grammar rules. From this point of view, we can realize how important the grammar plays in our English learning on students part and English teaching on teachers part.V. The Methods We Should Apply to English Grammar TeachingA. The habit-formation theoryThe habit-formation theory comes from the behaviorist psychology and was very popular in the 1950s and 1960s. It was put forward by a group of behaviorists with B.S>Skinner as their representative. According to behaviorists, language is regarded as a set of linguistics habits which are formed through identifying and strengthening the associations between stimuli and responses. Based on it, learning a second language means the formation of a new set of linguistic habits. Therefore, imitation and practice play important roles in the process of habit-formation because the behaviorists maintained that imitation will help learners identify the associations between stimuli and response while practice will reinforce associations and help learners to form the new linguistic habits (Rod 21). The behavioral theory holds that learning needs rehearsal and stimuli and is influenced by the frequency of reinforcement, while the habit-formation theory holds that accuracy is focused in language learning.B. The traditional methods of English grammar teachingIn the old times, when the English teacher taught the grammar, they would use two basic ways to introduce a new grammar item, either deductively or inductively. In a deductive approach, the teacher presented the grammar rules and then gave students exercises in which they apply the rules. In an inductive approach, the teacher presented samples of language, and the students have to come to an intuitive understanding of the rules. These two approaches have been alternated through the years. The traditional grammar-translation approach was based on deduction. This approach was then challenged by audiolingualism. A basic tenet of audiolingualism was that students should learn inductively. “Learning by analogy, not analysis” was a popular motto of audiolingulists. In fact, the deductive and inductive approaches are not mutually exclusive, and most teachers probably deploy both in their teaching. A major disadvantage of inductive learning is that it takes longer for students to arrive at an understanding of a rule that has been explained to them by their teacher. Another disadvantage is that the students may in fact come to the wrong conclusion about a particular grammatical principle. However, the disadvantages of the deductive approach are that explanation is seldom as memorable as other forms of presentation, such as demonstration and that such an approach encourages the belief that learning a language is simply a case of knowing rules (David 15-17).C. Opinions about the methods of English grammar teachingAs far as I am concerned, grammar is something that is not a dry and boring thing. Now that we can see that English grammar plays so important a role in learning English and teaching English, there is no doubt that we should learn English grammar. Hence, the next step students should care about is how to learn English grammar well, so English teachers should try their best to teach English grammar with the best methods. Ur points out that it is essential for the teachers to know how to present the form and meaning of a structure in a way that is clear, simple and helpful (Wang 115). With the development of English itself, the students text books have been changed differently and widely since we set up this kind of course. To all the teachers surprise, the contents in English textbooks become much easier, while the drills patterns become much harder. Some teachers give the lessons as are edited one by one, but the students cant answer questions well as they are expected. The reason why this kind of phenomenon comes into being is that the English teachers cant catch the grammar hiding in the context (Wen 8). They only pay more attention to the grammar exposing clearly in the textbooks, although the purpose of teaching is to help students chew, digest and produce new knowledge. So what I am trying to emphasize is that when teachers are going to give an English lesson, whatever forms of lesson will be, such as reading, warming up and speaking etc., teachers should prepare the lesson well, especially should have a clear mind on some language points which are difficult to be noticed. Only doing things like this, with the time going, will students have a better foundation on English grammar and apply it well. Since different students may have different ability of taking in knowledge. In order to solve this problem, teachers should adopt different teaching methods, and in this research paper, I will present five kinds of methods.1. Role playing