On Grammar Learning 对英语语法学习的一点看法

对英语语法学习的一点看法。

It’s not that Grammar is useless. It’s how to learn grammar and how to make use of grammar properly to facilitate language mastering.

Grammar is a tool to help the learning of the language, learning Grammar is not the ultimate purpose.

Grammar is on rules of language which were formulated with the evolvement and evolution of language over time and accumulated and written down by people.

When teaching Grammar, the teachers should teach in a way that inducing the students to come up with the grammar points themselves via plenty proper relevant input of language phenomena. Not letting students memorize grammatical rules and terms and definitions.

When the students are properly taught how to acquire grammar knowledge, grammar would become a very useful tool for students’ further education.

It’s not difficult to find successful stories in Mainland China’s middle school English education. It largely depends on the teachers.

As an example, in 1980’s, in a district where the beginning of English learning starts in junior middle school, the students started learning from ABC in Grade 1. After three years learning (one class with the same English teacher), six books in total, the students have roughly touched all the English grammar: parts of speech; compound sentences (different clauses); tenses; past participle and present participle; subjunctive mood; direct and indirect sentences, etc.

After the three years’ English study, hey had no problem with continuation of the English learning by themselves even if they dropped school ever since, as they had learned the phonetic sounds solidly, the 48 sounds (although it is not that standard pronunciation). They have the language sketch established, the only tasks later are to put more stuff into the sketch, like, more new words, more sentence patterns, more phrases, etc. And they can walk by themselves, they can refer to grammar books for explanations and dictionaries for pronunciation for further learning.
Of around 60 students in that class, the English test result was way above the average of the city and three of them got 99 and two got 100 on graduation for entrance examination to senior middle school. It can imagined how happy the school principal was as "good" students started to transfer to this school ...

How the grammar teaching was conducted:
Grammar points are taught through the learning of Sentence Patterns. After the students have mastered enough sentence patterns, the teacher purposefully induced the students to the Grammar points contained in the sentences.
When they were told that they had already finished the Grammar learning, the students were surprised that they have known the grammar, and felt that Grammar was that easy.
Next would be reinforcement: the students were required to be able to recite and write down the text of that lesson which contained the corresponding grammatical points.

Overall, many grammar points are known to the students but they don’t realize that, and it is sometimes not necessary for them to know that, such as, what is主语，谓语，定语，状语，表语，补语 等，they are actually using them although they don’t know the grammatical terms.

Ps. 读了我爱瑞士 的（原创）对国内英语教学现状谈点不成熟的看法 深有感触，非常赞同。想到了以上几点。

所有跟帖： 

• 同意，支持， 进一步引申和扩展了我的观点。 -我爱瑞士- ♀ (36 bytes) () 10/15/2009 postreply 22:36:06

• 在一定程度上，这是不是就是说的那种语感？ -blueswan- ♀ (50 bytes) () 10/15/2009 postreply 22:36:41

• 回复：在一定程度上，这是不是就是说的那种语感？ -billnet- ♂ (6 bytes) () 10/16/2009 postreply 08:38:47

• 写的好，条理清晰，文笔流畅，英语地道，谢谢分享。周末快乐。 -紫君- ♀ (0 bytes) () 10/16/2009 postreply 06:35:50

• 谢谢诸位。 -billnet- ♂ (0 bytes) () 10/16/2009 postreply 08:32:35

• 严重不同意，好像你的英语没学好，是一个教育体系造成的。 -李唐- ♂ (493 bytes) () 10/16/2009 postreply 09:56:59

• fully agree -englishreader- ♂ (330 bytes) () 10/16/2009 postreply 10:09:10

• Thank you for the good point. -马奎- ♂ (72 bytes) () 10/16/2009 postreply 12:06:38

• 回复：严重不同意，好像你的英语没学好，是一个教育体系造成的。 -billnet- ♂ (259 bytes) () 10/16/2009 postreply 14:42:56

• 严重不同意，我的英语没学好，就是一个教育体系造成的。 -HXXH- ♀ (176 bytes) () 10/17/2009 postreply 03:55:37