REVIEW JOURNAL 2
Name : Nurul Hamidah Septianingsih
Class : 4C
NPM : 1910631060118
Title
: A Contrastive Study of Grammar Translation Method and Communicative Approach
in Teaching English Grammar
Journal
: International Journal of English Language Teaching
Volume & Pages : Vol.
4, No. 2
Year : 2011
Writers : Shih-Chuan Chang
Reviewer
: Nurul Hamidah Septianingsih
Date
: 28 October 2021
Abstract :
The
journal entitled "A Contrastive Study of Grammar Translation Method and
Communicative Approach in Teaching English Grammar" contains about comparing
the Grammar Translation Method and the Communicative Approach both play an
important role in teaching grammar.
Abstract
or the Introduction presented by the author only uses English (International
Language). As a whole, the contents of this abstract or introductory section go
directly to the topics discussed in this journal, which in my opinion the
readers will find it easier to understand this journal.
Introduction
:
In
the first paragraph, the author emphasizes The current situation of grammar
teaching for English majors in colleges Curricula for English Majors require
that grammar teaching should be arranged as part of the program. As one of the
required courses, grammar has been taught to English majors in universities and
colleges for years. It is known that “grammar is a set of rules that define how
words (or parts of words) are combined or changed to form acceptable units of
meaning within a language” (Penny, 2000). Guaranteeing the accuracy of the
sentences mainly depends on the learner’s mastery of grammar. Grammar, which is
an indispensable part of a language, is so important that the teachers and
students have always attached great importance to grammar teaching and
learning. For the above-mentioned reasons, how to make grammar teaching and
learning effective and efficient is an important task for both English teachers
and researchers.
The
next paragraph the author emphasizes Significance of the research For decades,
English grammar teaching in Taiwan has been greatly influenced by some
traditional teaching methods, such as the Grammar Translation Method, the
Direct Method, and the Audio-Lingual Method. The Communicative Language Teaching
or Communicative Approach was introduced into Taiwan in the late 1970s.
Fostering the communicative competence is its central goal. Communicative
competence is concerned not only with what is grammatical but what is
appropriate in a given social situation. Hymes (1972) proposes that language
should be taught in communicative situations in order for learners to achieve
communicative competence. Learners should not only be equipped with language
knowledge, but also be capable of appropriately using the foreign language in
various situations. However, it has been gradually assumed among the scholars
and teachers in Taiwan that communicative competence makes the ultimate
objective of English Language teaching, and the Communicative Approach, if
completely and well conceived, does not involve the rejection of grammar.
Discussion :
In the discussion section, the author divides
the sub-subject into several sections, namely:
1
Findings From the above results, the major findings of the study can be
summarized as follows: (1) Firstly, learners in the experimental class made a
significant progress in grammar learning after experiencing an experimental
semester; (2) After the experimental semester, learners in the experimental
class made more progress in grammar learning than those in the control class;
(3) The Grammar Translation Method is more effective in improving learners’
learning confidence, and motivation than the Communicative Approach.
2
Limitations of the research Although the research has been carefully designed
and implemented, and it has provided us with the expectant result, there are
still some inevitable limitations in the study: Firstly, the sample of the
subjects is not large enough. Subjects in the present study are only sophomores
of English majors. Therefore, the results of the present study might not be
applicable to students of different proficiency levels. Secondly, the duration
of the experiment is not long enough. It is no surety that the same results
will still be obtained in a long-time study. Thirdly, the test papers used in
this experiment are chosen and corrected by the author, so there must be some
subjective factors which may influence the results of the experiment to a
certain extent
Conclusion
:
Without
grammar, words hang together without any real meaning or sense. In order to be
able to speak a language to some degree of proficiency and to be able to say
what people really want to say, some grammatical knowledge must be grasped. By
teaching grammar the teachers not only give the students the means to express
themselves, but also fulfill their expectations of what learning a foreign
language involves. There are no miracles on the way to learn a language. No
matter how students are taught grammatical concepts, syntactic constructions
and stylistic devices, or language conventions and editing concepts, they will
not automatically make use of these in their talking. What this thesis intends
to focus on is how to improve college students’ grammatical competence and
linguistic competence through the Grammar Translation Method. Based on the
theory of the Grammar Translation Method, this thesis compares the Grammar
Translation Method and the Communicative Approach. In order to prove the effect
of the Grammar Translation Method, the author of the thesis makes an experiment
on her own classes. After one semester’s teaching practice, the Grammar
Translation Method is proved to be a suitable and successful teaching approach
at Applied Foreign Language Department. Firstly, the learners in the
experimental class made a significant progress in grammar learning after
experiencing an experimental semester. Secondly, learners with the Grammar
Translation Method in the experimental class made more progress in grammar
learning than those who used the Communicative Approach in the control class.
Thirdly, the students’ confidence in learning English was improved. Even those
who lacked confidence in English in the past have become very active in the
classroom activities. Be in the view of college students’ actuality in Taiwan,
the best way to improve the situation is to combine both the Communicative
Approach and the Grammar Translation Method in teaching English Grammar. That
is because the Communicative Approach emphasizes fluency and the Grammar
Translation Method is concerned with accuracy, fluency and accuracy are the
target for English learning
Advantages :
- The theory and analysis model used are appropriate
- The language used by the writer is easy to understand the intent and purpose of the reader. The analysis is very detailed and easy to understand
Disadventages :
- The author is incomplete in concluding the entire contents of this journal.
- The author is less detailed in providing the results obtained in conducting his research.
Komentar
Posting Komentar