On Group Work in Teaching English Grammar in Junior High School文献综述

 2022-08-29 11:04:15

The Current Situation of Grammar Teaching in China

For over a century, English grammar teaching in China was dominated by traditional Grammar-Translation method, in which classroom teachers focused on grammar and structure isolation and the students lacked the ability to speak English.

In the 1980s, CLT, which puts emphasis on meaning and language use rather than language form, was introduced into China, and its development had a significant impact on Teaching English as a Foreign Language(TEFL) in China. In 1996, function-oriented textbook (Liu Daoyi, C. Jacques amp; B. Adamson, 1996) took the place of structure-oriented one in senior school of the whole country. This is a great transformation in China. These years have witnessed profound changes and substantial progress made in applying CLT in teaching practice. However, there still exist some problems, among which grammar teaching is the most serious. In spite of their success in developing highly functional skills in learners, they havenrsquo;t led to matching accuracy in production (Skehan, 2002).

The cause can be found from the following two aspects. On the one hand, in CLT grammar is attended to only in that it explains the various forms used to accomplish functions, and form is not the primary framework for organizing and sequencing lessons. Function is the framework, through which forms are taught, and accuracy is the secondary to conveying a message, and fluency may take on more importance than accuracy (Brown, 1987). In other words, in CLT meaning is the first, and form is the second, which results in the lack of accuracy in producing the target language. On the other hand, many people misunderstand CLT in the teaching practice. As Nunan(1989) pointed out, for some time after the rise of CLT, the status of grammar curriculum was rather uncertain and the place of grammar teaching was ignored by some linguists. Some instructors maintained that it was not necessary to teach grammar and that the ability to use a second language would develop automatically if the learners were required to focus on meaning in the process of using the language to communicate. In the middle schools of China, many teachers abandon teaching grammar. They consider that attention to form in the second language classroom serves more to hinder than to promote the process of language acquisition (Rutherford, 1987), and they misunderstand CLT, which was mentioned by Liu Jingzhong (1996) that the first one is that “CLT means not teaching grammar”; the second is “only speaking in English in class”or “only teaching spoken English” and so on. Several years have passed, and the students have made more rapid progress in speaking and listening than before, but their inter-language has been characterized by a lack of accuracy, which is in particular obvious among middle school students. As a matter of fact, great importance was attached to grammar teaching, as Canal and Swain(1980, from Richards and Rodgers,1986) suggest, grammar teaching is of great importance in CLT, grammatical competence is an indispensable component in the four dimensions of communicative competence. When middle school teachers begin to recognize the importance of grammar, grammar teaching is gradually emphasized. They once again pay attention to grammar teaching, but the situation doesnrsquo;t get better, because they still do it within the framework of the traditional 3Ps (Presentation, Practice and Production). Ellis (1993) claims that the PPP approach to language teaching is ineffective in attaining its goal of students producing the target language.

As we now know, such an approach above may prove ineffective because it doesnrsquo;t take account of how learners acquire grammatical structure (Krashen, 1982). Second language acquisition research (Pienemann, 1984) has shown that learners pass through a number of stages on route to acquire the ability to produce a target language structure and that teaching learners to produce a target structure that they are not ready to produce may not work. Krashen(1982) also proposed that asking learners to produce grammatical structure they find difficult and then correcting them when they made mistakes might increase their anxiety and result in a psychoactive block to learning anything. So the problem with grammar teaching now is not whether meaning or form is the first or the second, but of the same importance. The problem is also not whether grammar should be taught or not, but how to teach it, and the key point here is how the students can acquire grammar knowledge and use it effectively.

As is indicated above, the ideal effective gain in grammar teaching cannot be obtained either in traditional instruction or in communicative instruction. Skehan (2002) pointed out that merely engaging in language use is not enough; some degree of focus on form is needed, but it is also clear that this is best done within communicative activities, rather than independently. So in order to develop the three aspects of the language-accuracy, fluency and complexity, what kind of grammar teaching will work best for acquisition is just what the present study aims to discuss—Teaching Grammar by group work.

1.The definition of group work

Group work is one of the most important ways of cooperative learning. Davison (1990) considers that cooperative learning should have seven main points. First, the group is to finish, to discuss and solve problems together. Second, the numbers of group are communicating with each other face to face. Third, every group must have the atmosphere of cooperation. The fourth is the sense of responsibility of individual. The fifth is organizing students into groups. The sixth is to teach students skills of cooperation directly. The seventh is relying on each other with organization (王坦，2002：5).

Johnson and Holubec (1993) made a definition for cooperative learning in 1993. They said that cooperative learning is one kind of teaching methods. It uses group work to promote studentsrsquo; cooperation, then to achieve the most efficient learning (Jacobs, Power,amp; Inn, 2005:1).

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