3.1 Principles of situational approach 7
3.2 Functions of situational approach 8
4. The Application 10
4.1 The preparation before class 10
4.2 Apply Situational Approach in Superlatives Teaching 10
4.2.1 The application in class 10
4.2.2 Analysis 12
4.3 Apply Situational Approach in Simple Future Tense Teaching 12
4.3.1 The application in class 12
4.3.2 Analysis 15
4.4 Discussion 16
5. Conclusion 17
6. Reference 19
1. Introduction
1.1 Teaching condition in Junior High Schools
During my educational practice in Junior High School, I found that English teachers in Junior High School always pay more attention to students’ knowledge memorizing rather than the real application. They always ask students to memory the words, sentence, and paragraphs, and do exercise as much as possible. Students always felt bored in class. Especially in grammar teaching class, teacher always ask student to memorize the grammar principles and model sentences, then do relevant exercises as much as possible. Students in class just accept the knowledge passively and when using them in speaking and writing, same mistakes recur, even though they have remembered the principles very well.
Besides, many differences between English grammar and Chinese grammar can be found when we are learning English. And grammar brings a lot of obstacles for Chinese students in English learning. Students have difficulties in grammar learning, and lack of interests in grammar learning,
English textbooks have been popular all over the country for decades, and most of teachers have been actively making efforts to follow the concept of the new curriculum criteria.
However, there are some teachers who can’t fully understand the requirement of the new curriculum criteria, and they still adopt the traditional’ Acquisition’ teaching mode. Teachers explain grammar abstractly, and students learn it by memorize the principles, and practice the sentence structure mechanically. Many junior high school students are able to speak and write in English after years’ effort. However, many students still cannot grasp the basic English grammar. They do not know what noun, adjective, pronoun is, and confused about what is subject, predicate, object etc. They can hardly understand Tense and Voice. Complains like “It is too difficulty to learn English grammar well.” “I can’t stand English grammar.” can be heard among students. Students can’t remember and use grammar correctly only with a lot of exercises.
In China, the major task for most junior high school students is to pass the senior high school entrance examination. What determine their destiny are the marks in the written examination. Therefore, for a long time, teachers just pay most of their attention to the teaching of grammar rules and grammar patterns in test. It brings the result that students hate the dull grammar learning. (Song Nengxiang, 2000:95-97).
In addition, with the extension of task-based teaching method, many teachers emphasize the communicative function of English, giving their students little or even no explanation of English grammar, and they think some grammar mistakes are endurable if it not influenced the understanding. So a concept ‘neglect grammar’ has been popularized in junior high school English teaching and some even not teach grammar. Obviously, it is not correspond to the new curriculum criteria, as grammar is one of the basic skills in using English. English grammar teaching in junior high schools absolutely can’t be neglected. Only by mastering the rudimentary knowledge can they remove obstacles in learning English. So how to make the grammar teaching more efficient is what we want to find out. Many approaches have been tried to improve students’ grammar.