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【摘要】語法是语言的框架,因此语法教学十分重要。然而语法的某些特性，如稳定性、规范性等决定了语法教学是非常有难度的。学习者特别是初学者觉得语法规则很难记,这就决定了语法教学必须采取一种活泼的教学方法来完成出色的外语教学。在众多的教学法中，功能法被认为是最佳的一个，它具有最先进的理论基础，是语法教学的补充。但是许多学者认为它不适合语法教学，是一种反语法教学法。对此本文在分析学生和语法教学特点的同时也分析了功能法优缺点，用对比分析的方法证明了功能法适合语法教学。
【关键词】功能法;语法教学;特点;比较分析
Application of Functional Approach in Grammar Teaching in Junior Middle School
【Abstract】Grammar teaching is quite significant as grammar is the framework of a language. However, some of the special properties such as the stability and regularity of grammar determine that it is not easy to learn. Hence the grammar teaching is fairly difficult correspondingly. Learners especially beginners feel it difficult to remember the grammar rules. All of these demand that grammar teaching must adopt a lively teaching approach to facilitate the successful foreign language teaching thoroughly. Among the diverse teaching methods, Functional Approach is regarded as the best one with the most advanced theoretical basis. And it is complementary with grammar teaching. But many scholars think it an anti-grammar teaching approach which does not fit grammar teaching. The thesis analyze the features of both the students and the grammar teaching, meanwhile also analyses the advantages and disadvantages of Functional Approach to justify the view that Functional Approach fits the grammar teaching in the comparative analytic way.
【Key words】Functional Approach; Grammar teaching; Features; Comparative analysis
【中图分类号】G623.31【文献标识码】B 【文章编号】1001-4128（2011）02-0065-04
I Introduction
To build a building, a plan is necessary; to teach a language, the grammar is required. As a part of the whole process of language teaching, grammar teaching has been paid much attention all the time, for the first foreign language teaching method in foreign language teaching history was just the Grammar-Translation Method, which laid most on grammar of all the teaching methods. Up to now grammar teaching cannot be replaced in spite of the fact that the communicative function is emphasized more. Nevertheless, grammar teaching is not easy after all. For one reason, from the perspective of the general characters of a language, the systemic character of language confines that it is impossible to master grammar in a minute; on the other hand, the convention of language restricts that learners have to undergo a process of practicing including making all kinds of mistakes. And another reason, besides the general natures, grammar has its particular stability and regular property, which make it fairly dull and tiring. Undoubtedly students have to remember some rules quite different from their mother tongue. As that goes, students often suffer from the negative transfer of the native language, for example, the constant errors or mistakes are easy to reduce students' confidence and tolerance. But is it right that grammar means the language rules only? How can grammar teaching be interesting?
To resolve the problems, grammar teaching requires a vivid lively approach to make students feel interesting, useful and successful. Among the various teaching methods, the author thinks that Functional Approach also called the Communicative Approach is regarded as nearly the best one to use in grammar lessons. Firstly, Functional Approach is not contradictory to grammar teaching as most people think. Grammar is studied as a means of communication and used as a bridge in Functional Approach instead of ignoring it. Functional Approach submits that students should learn grammar by using it rather than know its usages. Secondly, Functional Approach is the liveliest approach among all kinds of teaching methods. Functional Approach not only has the advanced theory but also adopts new teaching style. True materials, appropriate task, and diverse styles are three predominant characters in Functional Approach, which make the contents of grammar lessons rich and interesting. Thirdly, good communication requires correct and accurate expressions. The paper analyses the features of grammar teaching and Functional Approach including the advantages and the disadvantages of them respectively in order to justify the idea above in the way of comparative analysis. If the grammar lessons are performed with Functional Approach, it must be a greater progress in grammar teaching method.
1 The attitude to grammar teaching of foreign language teaching（FLT） methods
1.1 A review of FLT methods
Grammar has been paid much attention all the time in the foreign language teaching history. Any method cannot replace it thoroughly. The first teaching method called Grammar-Translation Method emphasized grammar teaching regarding grammar as the core of a language. However, it exaggerated the functions of grammar and the vernacular and failed to make full use of the positive transfer during teaching. The whole teaching efficiency is fairly bad, slow, and tiny. Therefore it was replaced by the Direct Method in which grammar teaching was taught in the completely direct way i.e. the target language was taught without its grammar. With such method, the learners would be frustrated about how to organize the words of the language no matter how many sentences they had studied. Obviously it is not right to ignore grammar completely during the process of learning a foreign language. Later the Cognitive Method paid attention to the function of students' intelligence and stressed the cognition of the grammar rules. It also emphasized the significance of stimulating the students' enthusiasm, which was considered the great progress in FLT history. Nevertheless, it went too far at the principle that teaching must be based on comprehending the grammar rules.
1.2 Functional Approach
1.2.1 The definition and the linguistic base of Functional Approach
Functional Approach is a teaching methodical system that aims to foster communicative competence regarding the linguistic function as the syllabus. It submits that language is the tool of communication and communicative competence is at the top of language teaching. It emphasizes that the teaching process should be full of communicative information. To combine grammar with the communicative competence of language more perfectly, British linguist D.A Wilkins came up with Functional Approach in early 1970s as“a result of the growing need to promote European unity and coordination in the field of education and the development of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics”.［11］
Functional Approach is also known as the Communicative Approach whose linguistic basis is Halliday's sociolinguistics and Hymens' communication theory, which both research human beings' behavior in the speech community to reveal the interactivity perfectly, British linguist D.A. Wilkins came up with Functional Approach among the linguistic, social and cultural factors including language and the variation, language and pragmatics, language and sex and so on. Sociolinguistics builds a kind of theoretical mode, which can thoroughly explain the interaction between linguistic intrinsic mechanism and exterior factors.
Functional Approach takes psycholinguistics and social psychology as the psychological basis of the teaching method. Psycholinguistics studies the birth of grammar, the language acquisition and comprehensive ability including sound, word, phrase, sentence and discourse from the perspective of psychology and the psychological changes and activities when a person is learning a language. Social psychology studies human beings' psychological activities in society such as cognition, behavior attitude, motivation, influence and unity and so on. These theories provide the advanced and scientific psychological basis for Functional Approach.
1.2.2 The features of Functional Approach
The three predominant features of in Functional Approach are true materials, appropriate task, and diverse styles. Functional Approach selects true discourse materials from the students' present life to get the real-time efficiency in language teaching. And it designs the tasks in class appropriate to the students' present capacity to increase their successful opportunity in diverse teaching styles. Therefore there are three kinds of typical activities in Functional Approach: role playing, simulation, and group discussion. Role playing refers to the relation between the teacher and the students. Functional Approach is student-centered approach looking on the teacher and the students as the talkers instead of the teller and the listeners in traditional way. Simulation means that students simulate what native speakers do in communicative circumstances when they are learning. Group discussion is to discuss some relevant or real-time subjects in English in groups to practice what they have learnt in the larger dimension.
The teaching principles are: (1) the situational and communicative principle. (2) The principle of combining the function with the notion. (3) Regard the discourse as the teaching unit. (4) Do not correct students' mistakes strictly.
Nevertheless anything has its limitation. The disadvantages are: (1) It does not point out how to define the standard of the functional items. Nor specify the classification and arrangement of them. (2) It also requires further resolution whether to correct students' mistakes or not.
Regarding the advantages of this approach, it will improve the efficiency of grammar teaching if it is applied to.
2 The features of grammar teaching
Regarding to grammar teaching, different schools hold different opinions because they definite grammar differently. In China, the common sense about grammar is that grammar has to do with rules. Therefore it is one of the indispensable parts of grammar teaching to teach grammar rules. But the whole aim of grammar teaching is for the development of students' language skills to help students improve their abilities of language use. Its general features are stable rules and systemic character, mainly shown in the task and principles, which determines that the teaching process has to be performed orderly. Its particular feature is that it is limited by the school education.
3 Functional Approach fits the features of the grammar teaching
3.1 Functional Approach is not contradictory to grammar teaching
Some of scholars or teachers assert that Functional Approach is the least suitable for grammar teaching because the two are contradictory. They call this approach the anti-grammar teaching approach because they think that the communicative function is the center of the teaching procedure in Functional Approach. Therefore the grammar is naturally degraded to the lowest level compared with that in the traditional ways.
3.1.1 Functional Approach does not reject the explanation of grammar
In fact it is not so. Functional Approach does not reject the appropriate explanation of grammar. When students are frustrated about some grammatical phenomena or grammar knowledge, teachers have to explain it. Functional Approach is inclined to think of grammar as a skill according to Diane Larsen-Freeman who suggests that“it would better to think of grammar as a skill or dynamic process i.e. grammaring rather than a static area of knowledge.”［2］Hence it emphasizes grammaring much more. Grammar is studied as a tool and used as a bridge in Functional Approach instead of ignoring it. Functional Approach submits that students should learn grammar by using it rather than know its usages. It is studied through the inductive approach. The teacher and the students design some sentences, dialogues, or discourses in communicative situations containing the grammar knowledge that is going to be learned. For example, when students learn the present tense, every time the subject of the sentence is the third person, the teacher emphasizes that the inflectional suffix“s”should be attached to the predict verb. The teacher can describe the life of his or her families including himself or herself using different personal pronouns during the description so that students may distinguish the differences. For example, the teacher may say“My families go out to dinner once a week.” “My husband goes to party once a week.” “My daughter goes to her kindergarten at 7:50 every day.” “You go to school at 7:00 every day.”“How about your father?”When does he go to work every day?”
The sentences above embody the usage of verb in the present tense meanwhile teach students to describe their own everyday life. They combine the expressive function with the grammar knowledge naturally.
3.1.2 The theoretical basis of Functional Approach just fits the requirements of grammar teaching and students
Besides, the theoretical basis just fits the requirements of grammar teaching and the students. The evolutionary process of the foreign language teaching methods shows that every time a teaching method made progress because it paid more attention to attaining language competence than language forms using language corpora from the situation in life. The linguistic and psychological basis of Functional Approach is both practical and related to the everyday life. Sociolinguistics is popular with its rich contents. Its perspectives are various and the knowledge layers are different, which is regarded as the most effective linguistic theory in the 20th century. It makes Functional Approach interrelated with sociology, anthropology, psychology, social psychology and mass media. All of these provide a great deal of knowledge of diverse disciplines for students and open their horizons, which generates better teaching efficiency. The advanced theory shows that it is the liveliest teaching approach. Grammar teaching just needs such an approach to make up its demerits.
3.1.3 The teaching principles of Functional Approach also fit the requirements of grammar teaching
The main principles of grammar teaching also need combing with the principles of Functional Approach. The main principles of grammar teaching that are commonly taken are the inductive, deductive, contrasting and cognitive devices. All of these devices require true materials, diverse styles. If teachers use the examples far away from the present life like the traditional teaching style instead of using the communicative and situational ones, the students will feel tedious and tired in a short time. Only the expressions full of communicative and situational information which is connected with their life can promote them to learn the knowledge with interest. As the psychological saying goes“Requirement is the original drive to do something.”［3］ The three predominant characters in Functional Approach: True materials, appropriate task, and diverse styles just fit the requirements of grammar teaching. Also the teaching principles of Functional Approach stress the communicative properties and the functions of sentences, which bring students' learning enthusiasm into full play so as to make them no longer feel dull and useless. Meanwhile, Communicative Approach lays much on discourse analysis, which helps students express themselves and comprehend others better.
On the other hand, the main task of grammar teaching is to cultivate grammaring through some stable and conventional rules. This demands that students must remember them instead of changing some of them randomly according to their mother tongue, which causes the learning process a little dull inevitably although grammar teaching does not only mean to tell students the rules. To succeed in grammar teaching, teachers have to adopt the lively teaching approach－－Functional Approach to teach the grammar rules through using them with the sentences full of functional-notion information.
3.2 Good communication or expression requires the correct sentences based on grammar rules
It is not enough to know words used in everyday life for successful communication. The expression will not be clear unless the speaker use the correct expressive style or the sentences or the discourses based on grammar rules. Sesuan, a grammarian, asserts that if a person knows a million English words, but he does not know how to put them together, then he cannot speak English.This shows that students need to use the appropriate sentences or discourses based on grammar rules if they want to express themselves clearly and appropriately. Sociolinguistics thinks that the standard language is the mark of good education and such language is often used by the people in upper class in society. Besides different grammar structures mean different meanings showing their different functions. If students cannot understand and master the correct usages, the communication would be obscured and fail. e.g. the structure“should + auxiliary verb”means the subject of the sentence has done something that he ought not do. It shows the blaming mood of the speaker. During the communication the foreign language user must pay attention to it otherwise misunderstanding is easy to come. It is obvious that grammar knowledge is necessary.“Teachers should be attentive to foster their students' the mind of grammatical sentence patterns as they are cultivating the students' communicative competence”.
3.3 Functional Approach fits the psychological requirements of students
Students in junior middle schools are the liveliest teenagers who keep pursuing everything new and interesting. They enjoy learning anything useful as long as it arouses their curiosity. Functional Approach employs the social psychology and psycholinguistics as the psychological basis , it cares the students' learning attitude，the thought of teamwork and psychological changes and so on. Using Functional Approach, teachers can understand what the students think of the grammar knowledge being taught in different periods, which is helpful to remind the teachers of changing their teaching strategies creating the new-style classes with interesting language and rich teaching contents. Modern classes should offer students some time, space and opportunities to participate the class. Functional Approach cares about fostering students' communicative competence and emphasizes the communicative teaching process. A great deal of communicative information and large numbers of activities in communicative situation are shown in class. Additionally, one of the typical features of Functional Approach is the role playing, i.e. the relationship between the teacher and the students is equal. They change their traditional roles, they are equal speakers who are communicating instead of the teller and the listeners. All of these fit their psychology requirements that pursue everything lively and also bring the students' enthusiasm into play. And students will feel that learning is full of challenges.
Furthermore Functional Approach takes the discourse as the unit of teaching, which satisfies students' impetus of expression. The function-notion discourses are their means to declare their own suggestions when some words of students' mother tongue are not explicit enough. The discourse is just suitable for them and they will feel like learning more to express themselves better.
3.4 Functional Approach is helpful to encourage students to speak more
Functional Approach allows students to make mistakes during the learning process and does not correct them in a hurry. Influenced by their mother tongue, students are certain to make many mistakes constantly. The frustrated mood is unavoidable. At this time the teacher had better not strictly correct them, because, for students, they are not probably courageous enough to speak more if they are corrected too often. And the effect of the teaching is minimized naturally. Strictly Functional Approach encourages students especially beginners to practice more. We think it is better to tell the students what correct expression is like at the necessary time, otherwise students will never know whether their expressions are acceptable or not or others can understand them or not. The above measures increase the interest of Functional Approach.
II. Conclusion:
In brief, foreign language teaching will not succeed unless it realizes the social functions. Grammar teaching as an important part of FLT needs the most advanced and head-leading teaching approach. Functional Approach as the liveliest teaching approach stresses the communicative competence and functions in the teaching process taking the most advanced theoretical base and adopting new-style class presentation way. It brings the functional aspect of grammar into full play through a great numbers of communicative expressions and activities. It is complementary to grammar teaching. Grammar becomes the perfect expressive standard that corrects mistakes for good communication in Functional Approach instead of dead rules that must be recited. Hence it fits not only the grammar teaching but also the psychological requirements of students. To some extent, the limitation of educational periods makes up the demerits of Functional Approach. If teachers apply it well in grammar lessons, the efficiency of teaching will be better. Therefore Functional Approach fits grammar teaching.
Notes:
［1］ 束定芳,庄智象.现代外语教学——理论、实践与方法［M］.上海：上海外语教育研究出版社，1996.
［2］ Diane Larsen-Freeman. From Grammar to Grammaring［M］.Beijing Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005.
［3］ 刘奎林,邹华玉,宋岩.管理心理学［M］.哈尔滨： 黑龙江人民出版社2000.
Bibliography:
［1］ Diane Larsen-Freeman. From Grammar to Grammaring［M］.Beijing: Beijing Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005.
［2］H. Hornberger. Nancy. Mcday. Sandra Lee. Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching［M］. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
［3］Ralph, Fasold. The Sociolinguistics of Language［M］.Washington D.C.: Blackwell Publish Ltd,2000.
［4］Scord, Thomas. Psycholinguistics［M］.Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education and Research Press，2000.
［5］Sesuan, Brush. How to teach English［M］.London: Oxford University Press, 2000.
［6］ 胡文仲.基础英语教学论文集［C］.北京：外语教学与研究出版社，1985.
［7］ 刘奎林,邹华玉,宋岩.管理心理学［M］.哈尔滨： 黑龙江人民出版社2000.
［8］ 舒白梅,陈佑林.现代外语教学法［M］.北京：高等教育出版社,2001.
［9］ 束定芳,庄智象.现代外语教学——理论、实践与方法［M］.上海：上海外语教育研究出版社，1996.
［10］ 徐强.交際法英语教学和考试评估［M］.上海:上海外语教育出版社,2000.
【关键词】功能法;语法教学;特点;比较分析
Application of Functional Approach in Grammar Teaching in Junior Middle School
【Abstract】Grammar teaching is quite significant as grammar is the framework of a language. However, some of the special properties such as the stability and regularity of grammar determine that it is not easy to learn. Hence the grammar teaching is fairly difficult correspondingly. Learners especially beginners feel it difficult to remember the grammar rules. All of these demand that grammar teaching must adopt a lively teaching approach to facilitate the successful foreign language teaching thoroughly. Among the diverse teaching methods, Functional Approach is regarded as the best one with the most advanced theoretical basis. And it is complementary with grammar teaching. But many scholars think it an anti-grammar teaching approach which does not fit grammar teaching. The thesis analyze the features of both the students and the grammar teaching, meanwhile also analyses the advantages and disadvantages of Functional Approach to justify the view that Functional Approach fits the grammar teaching in the comparative analytic way.
【Key words】Functional Approach; Grammar teaching; Features; Comparative analysis
【中图分类号】G623.31【文献标识码】B 【文章编号】1001-4128（2011）02-0065-04
I Introduction
To build a building, a plan is necessary; to teach a language, the grammar is required. As a part of the whole process of language teaching, grammar teaching has been paid much attention all the time, for the first foreign language teaching method in foreign language teaching history was just the Grammar-Translation Method, which laid most on grammar of all the teaching methods. Up to now grammar teaching cannot be replaced in spite of the fact that the communicative function is emphasized more. Nevertheless, grammar teaching is not easy after all. For one reason, from the perspective of the general characters of a language, the systemic character of language confines that it is impossible to master grammar in a minute; on the other hand, the convention of language restricts that learners have to undergo a process of practicing including making all kinds of mistakes. And another reason, besides the general natures, grammar has its particular stability and regular property, which make it fairly dull and tiring. Undoubtedly students have to remember some rules quite different from their mother tongue. As that goes, students often suffer from the negative transfer of the native language, for example, the constant errors or mistakes are easy to reduce students' confidence and tolerance. But is it right that grammar means the language rules only? How can grammar teaching be interesting?
To resolve the problems, grammar teaching requires a vivid lively approach to make students feel interesting, useful and successful. Among the various teaching methods, the author thinks that Functional Approach also called the Communicative Approach is regarded as nearly the best one to use in grammar lessons. Firstly, Functional Approach is not contradictory to grammar teaching as most people think. Grammar is studied as a means of communication and used as a bridge in Functional Approach instead of ignoring it. Functional Approach submits that students should learn grammar by using it rather than know its usages. Secondly, Functional Approach is the liveliest approach among all kinds of teaching methods. Functional Approach not only has the advanced theory but also adopts new teaching style. True materials, appropriate task, and diverse styles are three predominant characters in Functional Approach, which make the contents of grammar lessons rich and interesting. Thirdly, good communication requires correct and accurate expressions. The paper analyses the features of grammar teaching and Functional Approach including the advantages and the disadvantages of them respectively in order to justify the idea above in the way of comparative analysis. If the grammar lessons are performed with Functional Approach, it must be a greater progress in grammar teaching method.
1 The attitude to grammar teaching of foreign language teaching（FLT） methods
1.1 A review of FLT methods
Grammar has been paid much attention all the time in the foreign language teaching history. Any method cannot replace it thoroughly. The first teaching method called Grammar-Translation Method emphasized grammar teaching regarding grammar as the core of a language. However, it exaggerated the functions of grammar and the vernacular and failed to make full use of the positive transfer during teaching. The whole teaching efficiency is fairly bad, slow, and tiny. Therefore it was replaced by the Direct Method in which grammar teaching was taught in the completely direct way i.e. the target language was taught without its grammar. With such method, the learners would be frustrated about how to organize the words of the language no matter how many sentences they had studied. Obviously it is not right to ignore grammar completely during the process of learning a foreign language. Later the Cognitive Method paid attention to the function of students' intelligence and stressed the cognition of the grammar rules. It also emphasized the significance of stimulating the students' enthusiasm, which was considered the great progress in FLT history. Nevertheless, it went too far at the principle that teaching must be based on comprehending the grammar rules.
1.2 Functional Approach
1.2.1 The definition and the linguistic base of Functional Approach
Functional Approach is a teaching methodical system that aims to foster communicative competence regarding the linguistic function as the syllabus. It submits that language is the tool of communication and communicative competence is at the top of language teaching. It emphasizes that the teaching process should be full of communicative information. To combine grammar with the communicative competence of language more perfectly, British linguist D.A Wilkins came up with Functional Approach in early 1970s as“a result of the growing need to promote European unity and coordination in the field of education and the development of sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics”.［11］
Functional Approach is also known as the Communicative Approach whose linguistic basis is Halliday's sociolinguistics and Hymens' communication theory, which both research human beings' behavior in the speech community to reveal the interactivity perfectly, British linguist D.A. Wilkins came up with Functional Approach among the linguistic, social and cultural factors including language and the variation, language and pragmatics, language and sex and so on. Sociolinguistics builds a kind of theoretical mode, which can thoroughly explain the interaction between linguistic intrinsic mechanism and exterior factors.
Functional Approach takes psycholinguistics and social psychology as the psychological basis of the teaching method. Psycholinguistics studies the birth of grammar, the language acquisition and comprehensive ability including sound, word, phrase, sentence and discourse from the perspective of psychology and the psychological changes and activities when a person is learning a language. Social psychology studies human beings' psychological activities in society such as cognition, behavior attitude, motivation, influence and unity and so on. These theories provide the advanced and scientific psychological basis for Functional Approach.
1.2.2 The features of Functional Approach
The three predominant features of in Functional Approach are true materials, appropriate task, and diverse styles. Functional Approach selects true discourse materials from the students' present life to get the real-time efficiency in language teaching. And it designs the tasks in class appropriate to the students' present capacity to increase their successful opportunity in diverse teaching styles. Therefore there are three kinds of typical activities in Functional Approach: role playing, simulation, and group discussion. Role playing refers to the relation between the teacher and the students. Functional Approach is student-centered approach looking on the teacher and the students as the talkers instead of the teller and the listeners in traditional way. Simulation means that students simulate what native speakers do in communicative circumstances when they are learning. Group discussion is to discuss some relevant or real-time subjects in English in groups to practice what they have learnt in the larger dimension.
The teaching principles are: (1) the situational and communicative principle. (2) The principle of combining the function with the notion. (3) Regard the discourse as the teaching unit. (4) Do not correct students' mistakes strictly.
Nevertheless anything has its limitation. The disadvantages are: (1) It does not point out how to define the standard of the functional items. Nor specify the classification and arrangement of them. (2) It also requires further resolution whether to correct students' mistakes or not.
Regarding the advantages of this approach, it will improve the efficiency of grammar teaching if it is applied to.
2 The features of grammar teaching
Regarding to grammar teaching, different schools hold different opinions because they definite grammar differently. In China, the common sense about grammar is that grammar has to do with rules. Therefore it is one of the indispensable parts of grammar teaching to teach grammar rules. But the whole aim of grammar teaching is for the development of students' language skills to help students improve their abilities of language use. Its general features are stable rules and systemic character, mainly shown in the task and principles, which determines that the teaching process has to be performed orderly. Its particular feature is that it is limited by the school education.
3 Functional Approach fits the features of the grammar teaching
3.1 Functional Approach is not contradictory to grammar teaching
Some of scholars or teachers assert that Functional Approach is the least suitable for grammar teaching because the two are contradictory. They call this approach the anti-grammar teaching approach because they think that the communicative function is the center of the teaching procedure in Functional Approach. Therefore the grammar is naturally degraded to the lowest level compared with that in the traditional ways.
3.1.1 Functional Approach does not reject the explanation of grammar
In fact it is not so. Functional Approach does not reject the appropriate explanation of grammar. When students are frustrated about some grammatical phenomena or grammar knowledge, teachers have to explain it. Functional Approach is inclined to think of grammar as a skill according to Diane Larsen-Freeman who suggests that“it would better to think of grammar as a skill or dynamic process i.e. grammaring rather than a static area of knowledge.”［2］Hence it emphasizes grammaring much more. Grammar is studied as a tool and used as a bridge in Functional Approach instead of ignoring it. Functional Approach submits that students should learn grammar by using it rather than know its usages. It is studied through the inductive approach. The teacher and the students design some sentences, dialogues, or discourses in communicative situations containing the grammar knowledge that is going to be learned. For example, when students learn the present tense, every time the subject of the sentence is the third person, the teacher emphasizes that the inflectional suffix“s”should be attached to the predict verb. The teacher can describe the life of his or her families including himself or herself using different personal pronouns during the description so that students may distinguish the differences. For example, the teacher may say“My families go out to dinner once a week.” “My husband goes to party once a week.” “My daughter goes to her kindergarten at 7:50 every day.” “You go to school at 7:00 every day.”“How about your father?”When does he go to work every day?”
The sentences above embody the usage of verb in the present tense meanwhile teach students to describe their own everyday life. They combine the expressive function with the grammar knowledge naturally.
3.1.2 The theoretical basis of Functional Approach just fits the requirements of grammar teaching and students
Besides, the theoretical basis just fits the requirements of grammar teaching and the students. The evolutionary process of the foreign language teaching methods shows that every time a teaching method made progress because it paid more attention to attaining language competence than language forms using language corpora from the situation in life. The linguistic and psychological basis of Functional Approach is both practical and related to the everyday life. Sociolinguistics is popular with its rich contents. Its perspectives are various and the knowledge layers are different, which is regarded as the most effective linguistic theory in the 20th century. It makes Functional Approach interrelated with sociology, anthropology, psychology, social psychology and mass media. All of these provide a great deal of knowledge of diverse disciplines for students and open their horizons, which generates better teaching efficiency. The advanced theory shows that it is the liveliest teaching approach. Grammar teaching just needs such an approach to make up its demerits.
3.1.3 The teaching principles of Functional Approach also fit the requirements of grammar teaching
The main principles of grammar teaching also need combing with the principles of Functional Approach. The main principles of grammar teaching that are commonly taken are the inductive, deductive, contrasting and cognitive devices. All of these devices require true materials, diverse styles. If teachers use the examples far away from the present life like the traditional teaching style instead of using the communicative and situational ones, the students will feel tedious and tired in a short time. Only the expressions full of communicative and situational information which is connected with their life can promote them to learn the knowledge with interest. As the psychological saying goes“Requirement is the original drive to do something.”［3］ The three predominant characters in Functional Approach: True materials, appropriate task, and diverse styles just fit the requirements of grammar teaching. Also the teaching principles of Functional Approach stress the communicative properties and the functions of sentences, which bring students' learning enthusiasm into full play so as to make them no longer feel dull and useless. Meanwhile, Communicative Approach lays much on discourse analysis, which helps students express themselves and comprehend others better.
On the other hand, the main task of grammar teaching is to cultivate grammaring through some stable and conventional rules. This demands that students must remember them instead of changing some of them randomly according to their mother tongue, which causes the learning process a little dull inevitably although grammar teaching does not only mean to tell students the rules. To succeed in grammar teaching, teachers have to adopt the lively teaching approach－－Functional Approach to teach the grammar rules through using them with the sentences full of functional-notion information.
3.2 Good communication or expression requires the correct sentences based on grammar rules
It is not enough to know words used in everyday life for successful communication. The expression will not be clear unless the speaker use the correct expressive style or the sentences or the discourses based on grammar rules. Sesuan, a grammarian, asserts that if a person knows a million English words, but he does not know how to put them together, then he cannot speak English.This shows that students need to use the appropriate sentences or discourses based on grammar rules if they want to express themselves clearly and appropriately. Sociolinguistics thinks that the standard language is the mark of good education and such language is often used by the people in upper class in society. Besides different grammar structures mean different meanings showing their different functions. If students cannot understand and master the correct usages, the communication would be obscured and fail. e.g. the structure“should + auxiliary verb”means the subject of the sentence has done something that he ought not do. It shows the blaming mood of the speaker. During the communication the foreign language user must pay attention to it otherwise misunderstanding is easy to come. It is obvious that grammar knowledge is necessary.“Teachers should be attentive to foster their students' the mind of grammatical sentence patterns as they are cultivating the students' communicative competence”.
3.3 Functional Approach fits the psychological requirements of students
Students in junior middle schools are the liveliest teenagers who keep pursuing everything new and interesting. They enjoy learning anything useful as long as it arouses their curiosity. Functional Approach employs the social psychology and psycholinguistics as the psychological basis , it cares the students' learning attitude，the thought of teamwork and psychological changes and so on. Using Functional Approach, teachers can understand what the students think of the grammar knowledge being taught in different periods, which is helpful to remind the teachers of changing their teaching strategies creating the new-style classes with interesting language and rich teaching contents. Modern classes should offer students some time, space and opportunities to participate the class. Functional Approach cares about fostering students' communicative competence and emphasizes the communicative teaching process. A great deal of communicative information and large numbers of activities in communicative situation are shown in class. Additionally, one of the typical features of Functional Approach is the role playing, i.e. the relationship between the teacher and the students is equal. They change their traditional roles, they are equal speakers who are communicating instead of the teller and the listeners. All of these fit their psychology requirements that pursue everything lively and also bring the students' enthusiasm into play. And students will feel that learning is full of challenges.
Furthermore Functional Approach takes the discourse as the unit of teaching, which satisfies students' impetus of expression. The function-notion discourses are their means to declare their own suggestions when some words of students' mother tongue are not explicit enough. The discourse is just suitable for them and they will feel like learning more to express themselves better.
3.4 Functional Approach is helpful to encourage students to speak more
Functional Approach allows students to make mistakes during the learning process and does not correct them in a hurry. Influenced by their mother tongue, students are certain to make many mistakes constantly. The frustrated mood is unavoidable. At this time the teacher had better not strictly correct them, because, for students, they are not probably courageous enough to speak more if they are corrected too often. And the effect of the teaching is minimized naturally. Strictly Functional Approach encourages students especially beginners to practice more. We think it is better to tell the students what correct expression is like at the necessary time, otherwise students will never know whether their expressions are acceptable or not or others can understand them or not. The above measures increase the interest of Functional Approach.
II. Conclusion:
In brief, foreign language teaching will not succeed unless it realizes the social functions. Grammar teaching as an important part of FLT needs the most advanced and head-leading teaching approach. Functional Approach as the liveliest teaching approach stresses the communicative competence and functions in the teaching process taking the most advanced theoretical base and adopting new-style class presentation way. It brings the functional aspect of grammar into full play through a great numbers of communicative expressions and activities. It is complementary to grammar teaching. Grammar becomes the perfect expressive standard that corrects mistakes for good communication in Functional Approach instead of dead rules that must be recited. Hence it fits not only the grammar teaching but also the psychological requirements of students. To some extent, the limitation of educational periods makes up the demerits of Functional Approach. If teachers apply it well in grammar lessons, the efficiency of teaching will be better. Therefore Functional Approach fits grammar teaching.
Notes:
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