2。 Literature Review

Grammar teaching has always been the focus of language teaching, centering on the question of whether grammar should be taught or not, and there are generally two different views。 While some scholars hold that grammar teaching is the core of language teaching, some believe that communicative competence is the ultimate goal, thus grammar should be kicked out in language teaching。 In today’s China, although communicative approach gains the upper hand in theory, the majority of the teachers still apply the traditional method。文献综述

Owing to different historical background, grammar teaching undergoes ups and downs。 Since the 1970s when the communicative language teaching method comes into being, many linguists claim that grammar teaching is useless, and the representative one is Krashen。 He believes that language should be acquired through being exposed to natural environment rather than formal teaching, and this opinion are supported by Skehan, Dekeyser and so on。 Also, according to the universal grammar theory, everybody is born with grammar in his head, and once he is exposed to the language, he will acquire the grammar of the language。 What’s more, some critics argue that grammar teaching inhabits students from achieving communicative competence。 Just as Littlejohn has said, the ultimate goal of English teaching is to get the students to communicate freely, and thus the methods should also be communicative。 (Zhang 105) That is to say, the English class should take students-teacher interaction as the focus, paying little attention to the explanation of grammar。 The mastery of grammar does not mean the mastery of language, and too much emphasis on grammar can not guarantee that students can express themselves fluently。 Moreover, some researchers found that there are some similarities between mother language acquisition and second language acquisition。 Since children can acquire their mother tongue without formal instruction, the ESL learners can acquire the second language like a child。

However, the outcomes of the second language acquisition research urge linguists to reconsider the function of grammar teaching, and people who are for grammar teaching put forward the following reasons。 Firstly, when children acquire their mother language, they are immersed in that language environment, thus they can have a sense of language and attain the ability to communicate in daily life。 Nonetheless, learning English without the authentic language contexts, the learners should master the systematic grammatical rules and basic grammatical structures in order to enhance the accuracy of using English。

Secondly, the advocators of grammar teaching argue that grammar is a set of finite rules, and with the knowledge of these rules, the learners can create infinite sentences。 Without the rules, the learner can only utter separate items, and thus make the communication vey confusing。

Thirdly, in the last few decades, a large number of experiments show that although grammar teaching may not alter the sequence of language acquisition, it can promote the level of second language, and the representative scholars are Larsen- Freeman &Long。 Also, not only implicit grammar teaching but also the explicit teaching can help students get corrective feedback and acquire complex grammatical structures, thus contribute to the final achievements a lot。来*自~优|尔^论:文+网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766*

Fourthly, the revival of grammar teaching is owing to the fact that the communicative approach doesn’t achieve the ideal effect。 The communicative approach insists that grammar is acquired unconsciously, and formal grammar teaching is unnecessary。 It emphasizes the communication of the meaning, ignoring the grammatical form。 The famous Chinese linguist Hu Zhuanglin once gave such an example: The Britain linguists and educators once believed that children do not need to learn grammar and can acquire the language naturally。 They edited the textbook called Language Use。 After several years, they found that the level of the children’s English fell a lot。 Then they held a seminar to reevaluate the function of grammar teaching, the participants include some famous linguists like Halliday, Widdowson, Wilkins and Leech。 They reached a consensus that grammar teaching is necessary and a grammar book which is interesting and easy to understand is needed。 Also, according to Swain and his colleagues, although the learning format of “immersion” can provide a lot of learning materials for the learners, the learners still can’t use the right grammatical form。 Thus they hold that formal grammar teaching is the most effective way to enhance the accuracy of using the grammatical structures。