Starting from 2:30 p.m. on May 25, Professor Cheng Xiaotang from the School of Foreign Languages and Literature, Beijing Normal University gave a lecture entitled “Rethinking the teaching of English grammar” to the faculty and graduate students of the School of Foreign Languages. The lecture delivered via Tencent Conference attracted more than 120 teachers and students. It was presided over by Professor Li Chongyue, Dean of the School of Foreign Languages.
Professor Chen began his lecture with his personal experience with learning and teaching English grammar. “It is hard to learn and boring”, complained the professor. Then he illustrated with concrete examples the problems concerning the instruction of English grammar, including the low proficiency of grammar of teachers themselves and the inappropriate methods adopted by them to teach grammar. The problems prompted him to rethink grammar and grammar teaching by consulting as many papers and books as possible to explore the nature of grammar and grammar learning. Based on his meticulous study, he concluded, “The main purpose of grammar is not to judge whether we speak correctly, but to let us speak with greater succinctness, accuracy, fluency, intelligibility and fun”. Therefore, Professor Chen put forward six new ideas about learning and teaching grammar: 1) Work out the reasons underlying grammatical rules; 2) Give due attention to the context in which a linguistic form (structure) is used; 3) Expand or amend the existing rules according to the actual situation of language use; 4) Explore the authentic features of grammatical structure based on examples in a corpus; 5) Give heed to the flexibility and creativity of language use; 6) Explore linguistic problems in the real world. These new ideas about grammar and grammar learning offered solutions to the problems that have long puzzled the teachers and students of English grammar at large, inspiring the audience to better learn and use grammar in their future work and life.
The lecture concluded with a wrap-up made by Dean Li Chongyue. The lecture by Professor Chen injects new ideas to the intensive professional development of the English Department of the School of Foreign Languages, setting a good example for the development of the professional and academic abilities of the faculty and students of the School.
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English