An Analysis of Problems in English Grammar Teaching

山西省忻州市第三中學(xué) 孫曉晶

Grammar teaching is an essential part in English teaching, it is related to the teaching of istening, speaking,reading and writing. If students can master the grammar, they can apply it in use and improve their capabiliaty of skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

The way of traditional grammar teaching is that teachers teach the grammar principles particularly and make students do exercise as many as possible. The teachers adopt the teaching model of theory first, practice second.Teachers talk a lot and students take notes hard. It seems that only by doing those can strudents learn grammar well. However,there are many problems existing in grammar teaching.

1.Problems in grammar teaching

1.1 The time during which teachers teach grammar is limited

Teachers always spend much time explaining the definition and principles of grammar but seldom focus on the usage of grammar application. May be the teachers have to teach other parts of the textbooks, they can not cost too much time and energy in th grammar teaching, which is one of the reasons why students do not have enough time to practice grammar and use it in their English learning. Gradually, they forget some priciples of grammar.For example, we have to teach 4 textbooks pressed by foreign language ang research press in a semester and a textbook contains 6 modules, which means students must learn 24 modules in a semester. A module includes new words and expressions,introduction, reading, grammar1,grammar2, everyday English,writing, cultual corner, task,etc. We teachers have to teach these parts in a week and half at least, therefore, we do not have enough time to make grammar exercise in classs, so we ask students to do exercise after class, however, some students often put the exercise aside after class.

1.2 The teaching method is out of date

The second problem of grammar teaching is that the class in which teachers teach grammar is always as dry as a chip. It makes some stuednts sleepy in class and lose their interest in learning English. Because they think it is too difficult to uaderstand and remember so many rules about grammar and it is hard to apply them in their English learning.So they always make mistakes in their oral English and writing.

2.The solution to improve grammar teaching

2.1 Require students to preview before grammar class

Before the grammar teaching,we can ask students to preview the grammar they will learn and find some questions which they do not ungerstand on the grammar. It promotes students to pay attention in class, so that they can find the answers to the questions they find before.In this way, students learn the gammar actively and remember the principles by heart.

2.2 Make the grammar class interesting

Teachers set some examples of our surroundings as many as possible or use some models by using the grammar we are teaching in order to attract students attention, so that students regard it as a familiar issue and do not feel sleepy in class. Also we can make up a pithy formula in teaching. For example ,the order of adjective which describes nouns can be remembered like:好美小高狀其新，彩色國(guó)料特別親。

2.3 Let students learn grammar by themselves

When we give classes about grammar, we can ask some students to discuss the priciples in group and then explain them by themselves if they are not so difficult and understood easily,which can develop students interests in learning grammar. As a result, students learn how to study the grammar by their own step by step.

2.4 Repeat questions related to grammar

Teachers should ask students to do exercise after class and revise the grammar they have learnt. Students may not revise the grammar principles consciously. To stimulate students to revise and remember the rules, we can ask students questions connected to grammar in every class before we start new lesson. According to the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve,humans tend to halve their memory of newly learned knowledge in a matter of days or weeks unless they consciously review the learned material. The stronger the memory is, the longer period of time that a person is bale to recall it. So we repeat the questions, students will revise and remember the grammar principles guadually.

The grammar teaching requires us teachers to make good preparation in theory about the new textbook as well as to take out some old concept. We should study teaching strategies carefully either, and use them in our grammar teaching.