英语语法教学的必要性

论文总字数：32831字

摘 要

语法是框架，是建立语言大厦必不可少的成分。长期以来,教育界关于英语语法在英语教学中的地位一直莫衷一是，教与不教语法的问题饱受争议。本论文通过对各种教学法的回顾发现，语法教学在这些教学法中都有一定的地位。“语法大讨论”使得语法地位在英国、美国和澳大利亚等国教学中重新得到确立。通过对中国中学生开展的调查结果发现，中国学习者也认为语法在英语学习中起重要作用。语法教学是中学英语教学中不可缺少的组成部分。

关键词：语法教学；中学生；语法教学的必要性

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review…………………………………………………………2

2.1 The origin of the English grammar……………………………………2

2.2 The definitions of grammar…………………………………....…………2

2.3 The characteristics of grammar………………………………....…………...3

1. Review of the role of Grammar in Language Teaching ……………...4

3.1 Grammar in the Grammar-Translation Method………………………….5

3.2 Grammar in the Situational Language Teaching ……………………........5

3.3 Grammar in the Audiolingual Method…………………………………...6

3.4 Grammar in the Communicative Language Teaching Method…………..6

1. The Debates of Teaching Grammar…………………………………….7
2. The Importance of Grammar…………………………………………..8
3. Students’ Attitudes towards the Study of Grammar…………………9
4. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..12

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………...14

1. Introduction

We overview the history of grammar instruction and find that grammar has always been playing a role in foreign language teaching and learning. As the result of recognition of importance of grammar, grammar teaching takes an important place by reviewing different language teaching methods. Of the methods applied in the foreign language teaching, such as the Grammar-Translation Method, the Situational Language Teaching, the Audiolingual Method and the Communicative Language Teaching Method, grammar is considered as an integral part of language teaching. This may be one of the reasons leading to the debates of teaching grammar. The debates result in fresh cognition of grammar: it is very important in that not only does it help improve learners writing, but also it helps learners do better in reading comprehension; more significantly, the problem of how to teach grammar effectively has been raised. “Great Grammar Debate’’ makes the status of grammar reestablished in English teaching in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and other countries. Is grammar teaching necessary or not? In response to this question, the author re-recognizes the place of grammar instruction and wants to get the result by doing a survey. From the survey which conducted on Chinese middle school students, the author finds that most students share the same view of the essential role of grammar in their language learning. Grammar instruction is necessary in English teaching, and we should attach enough importance on it.

This thesis consists of seven sections. In section one, the writer gives a brief introduction of this thesis. Grammar, including the origin, definition and characteristics of grammar, is explored in section two. The purpose of this part is to make it clear that grammar plays an important role in language teaching. The main body of the thesis is made up of four parts: the review of the role of grammar in language teaching, the debates of teaching grammar, the importance of teaching grammar and students attitudes towards the study of grammar. Section three represents the role of grammar in four main language teaching methods. In section four, instructors differ greatly in their opinions on the importance of grammar study in language teaching. Section five describes the importance of grammar is also due to the fact that it is because of grammar of the language that makes it possible for us to talk about language. The survey in section six shows that students believe that grammar is very important and necessary in their study. The major findings, the limitation of the study and suggestions for future research are presented in the last section.

2. Literature Review

Students know the term grammar well, but most of them seem to be ignorant of its origin, its definition, its characteristics and its debates; hence these are investigated in this section. On the other side, it’s easy for us to explain what aspects of grammar should be instructed to Chinese high school students by discussing the origin, definition and characteristics.

2.1 The origin of the English grammar

The origin of the English word grammar can be dated back the Greek word graphein which implys to draw or write. In this respect gramma was created to mean letter, as in an alphabetic letter. Grammata is the plural form of this word that evolved at one time to signify the fundamentals of writing, and finally to mean the fundamentals of learning. In the end being combined with techne, , the adjective form of the word grammatike implied the “art of knowing one’s letters” (Dykema 455). This Greek grammatik was borrowed into Latin as grammatical, the alteration of which became the old French word gramaire, of which in turn Middle English gramere was the offspring. Up until now, we can see it clearly that grammar has been pertinent to letter or writing, even broad enough to be related to learning at times from the first day grammar was created.

2.2 The definitions of grammar

The authors of A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language discuss that the word “grammar” has varieties of meanings and it means various things to different persons illustrating the issue from different viewpoints of language (Quirk et al. 12). Shu Dingfang summarizes and categorizes all the definitions of grammar from viewpoints of history and description (Shu 99-100) .

Speaking historically, grammar can be divided into two parts, prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar. A prescriptive grammar displays principles about the structure of a language. Different from a descriptive grammar, it handles what the grammarian thinks to be good or bad, right or wrong language use and doesn’t obey the rules which will result in incorrect language. In fact, the way a descriptive grammar looks at a language is used by its speakers and then makes an attempt to analyse it and formulate principles about the structure. Descriptive grammar doesn’t handle what is good or bad language use. It regards structures and forms which may not be used by speakers of standard English as valid and included. It is a grammar on the base of the way that a language actually is, instead of how people believes it should be.

From the viewpoint of objects, grammar consists of synchronic grammar and diachronic grammar. From the viewpoint of ways, grammar is divided into contrastive and comparative grammar. From the viewpoint of goal, we have linguistic grammar, pedagogical grammar and reference grammar. Pedagogical grammar is composed of student’s grammar and teacher’s grammar while student’s grammar is made up of grammar within teaching material and grammar materials. Reference grammar can be further segmented into university grammar, school grammar and user’s grammar. Shu also introduces case grammar, stratificational grammar and some other theoretical grammars belonging to linguistic grammar in his book (Shu 99). Figure 1 illustrates the summary of categories of grammar.

2.3 The characteristics of grammar

Everything has its own characteristics, and grammar is no exception. From the different viewpoints of grammarian, linguists, and scholars, grammar is commonly considered to describe the sentence structure of a language system. At times grammar is defined as the rule of a language as well, but actually no language has rules. When we use the word rules, we imply that someone spoke the language after creating the rules first, like a new sport of baseball, volleyball, relay race, or the like. However, languages did not start like that. It is started by humans through making sounds to express their meanings, which later evolved into words, phrases and sentences. All commonly-spoken language is not fixed. All languages change with time except invented languages, for example Esperanto. And rules of Esperanto would soon be quite different if Esperanto were widely spoken. What we call grammar is just a reflex of a language at a specific time.

history descriptive grammar

Grammar

prescriptive/traditional description

ways goal

objects

contrastive/comparative

synchronic grammar diachronic grammar

pedagogical grammar reference grammar linguistic grammar

school grammar user’s grammar university grammar

student’s grammar teacher’ grammar

stratificational grammar case grammar

grammar materials grammar within teaching material

Figure 1 Categories of English grammar (Shu 99-100)

3. Review of the Role of Grammar in Language Teaching

Foreign language teaching has a history of hundreds of years (Modern foreign language teaching dates back to 17th century), if not thousands of years (According to the recorded historical materials, the earliest foreign language teaching dates back to 300 BC when the Romans began to learn Greek). During the long course of foreign language teaching, the most influential ones of all the methods used in the foreign language teaching are the Grammar-Translation Method, the Situational Language Teaching, the Audiolingual Method and the Communicative Language Teaching Method. Grammar plays a different role in these different influential methods. In other words, though these different methods have different attitudes towards grammar, all the methods put forward that it is a essential part of language teaching commonly.

3.1 Grammar in the Grammar-Translation Method

The principal characteristic of the Grammar-Translation Method is that the goal of foreign language learning is to learn a language in order to read its literature, therefore, reading and writing are the main components. Grammar-Translation is a standard approach of studying a foreign language which means to translate from mother tongue to target language. Grammar is taught deductively, put it in another way, students are required to translate whole texts word for word and remember many a grammatical rule and exception and enormous vocabulary lists. All in all, grammar plays an essential role in foreign language teaching. Grammar-Translation is predominant in foreign language teaching in Europe from the ancient days to the 1940s. It is also widely applied in situations to understand literary texts is the main goal of foreign language acquisition and there is no need to speak the language. Contemporary texts for the teaching of foreign languages at college level often reflect Grammar-Translation principles. These texts are frequently the products of people trained in literature rather than in spoken language. Therefore there is no doubt to say that the Grammar-Translation Method is still diffusely practiced in an improved form in some parts of modern world.

3.2 Grammar in the Situational Language Teaching

Situational Language Instruction uses an inductive method to grammar instruction. The significance of the structure is not to explain the native language or target language, but the way it is used in the form under the circumstances. New language points are practiced in the situation. The major feature of the method is that the complex form should be taught after the simple one followed by the principle of classification of grammatical items. Reading and writing are introduced as soon as enough grammatical basis is established. Harold Palmer and A. S. Hornby are two leading persons of Situational Language Teaching. Harold Palmer underlined the problems of grammar for foreign learners in his writing and most of which was pointed to develop classroom procedures that is appropriate for the teaching of basic grammatical patterns through a verbal way (Richards and Rodgers 32-33). He viewed grammar as the underlying sentence patterns of the spoken language. Accuracy in grammar is considered to be essential. The textbook contains tightly organized lessons planned around different grammatical structures. The visual element together with a carefully graded grammatical syllabus is a crucial aspect of Situational Language Teaching.

3.3 Grammar in the Audiolingual Method

The Audiolingual Method is the result of combination of structural linguistic theory, contrastive analysis, aural-oral procedures and behaviorist psychology. Language was regarded as a system of structurally related parts for the encoding of meaning, phonemes, morphemes, words, structures, and sentence types. Linguistic levels were viewed as system within system. In other word, it is pyramidally structured that phonemic systems result in morphemic system, and this in turn result in the higher-level systems of phrases, clauses, and sentences. It was assumed that learning a language need to master the elements or building blocks of the language and learning the rules by which these elements are associated, from phoneme to morpheme to word to phrase to sentence. Early practice should focus on mastery of phonological and grammatical structures because the structure, which is crucial and unique about a language is equivalent to grammar and the starting points. Dialogues and drills are the elements of audiolingual classroom practice. Specific grammatical patterns in the dialogue are chosen and become the main emphasis of a variety of drills and pattern-practice exercises when the dialogue is presented and memorized.

3.4 Grammar in the Communicative Language Teaching Method

Since the mid-1970s the scope of Communicative Language Teaching has expanded. Some linguists and language teaching specialists hold the opinions that Communicative Language Teaching means little more than an integration of grammatical and functional teaching. Littlewood states, “One of the most characteristic features of communicative language teaching is that it pays systematic attention to functional as well as structural aspects of language.” (Littlewood 1) We can find a related analysis of communicative competence in Canale and Swain’s Communication Approaches to Language Teaching, in which four components of communicative abilities are identified: grammatical competence, strategic competence, sociolinguistic competence, and discourse competence. Grammatical competence refers to what Chomsky calls linguistic competence and what Hymes intends by what is “formally possible”. (qtd. in Dai 149-150)

We can see the shape of grammar in all these influential foreign language teaching methodologies. Whether it was taught deductively or inductively, it attracted the attention of more and more experts who carried out researches to test the value of grammar teaching. However, the results they obtained were quite different or even opposite to their original hypothesis. This led to the debates of teaching grammar.

4. The Debates of Teaching Grammar

According to Mulroy, “the value of grammar was never challenged” until our day (Mulroy 11-16). Does a student’s writing ability improved by training in “formal grammar”? Once there is no doubt that the answer of this question was yes, as a result students were taught grammatical analysis in order to improve their ability of writing. However, it’s really beyond people’s expectation that the results were negative when language teaching specialists and educational researchers sought evidence to prove this answer. A large amount of studies in the 60s and 70s which have been considered as classic support for the view of grammar instruction does nothing for student’s writing. By the late 60s the mainstream point of scholars such in both Britain and America, and possibly throughout the English-speaking world, was that “most children cannot learn grammar and ... even to those who can it is of little value”. There is no doubt that this point of view is suitable for the spirit of the times in English teaching (where grammar was viewed as a chain of children’s imagination) as well as linguistics (where Chomsky maintained that the development of grammatical competence is natural in accordance with an innate programme, thus teaching is simply unrelated).

Since then, grammar has played a controversial role in second and foreign language teaching for decades. In the United States, the “Great Grammar Debate” lasted almost three decades. There are currently two extreme positions in English as a second language and English as a foreign language concerning the teaching of English grammar. At one extreme, the earliest research which doubted the significance of grammar teaching discovered that it was just a waste of time since that most of the children didn’t apply to any categories even after many years of teaching. Methodologists tell us that language acquisition in the classroom is not to teach grammar explicitly and not to correct any learner’s errors. Influenced by their viewpoint of grammar, some teachers adamantly insist that teaching formal grammar is useless and even harmful. The anti-grammar tide reached its peak in November 1985, when the National Council of Teachers of English passed a resolution against the use of isolated grammar and usage exercises not supported by theory and research.

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