In the past,grammar was the focus of English language teaching and learning in China. The English class had been dominated by teachers' explaining grammar rules and sentence structures. Students were busy taking notes and they were given no time to practice using English for communication.Consequently,while having acquired a sufficient amount of grammar knowledge,students did not know how to express themselves in simple English.
In recent years,it has been argued that we should stop teaching grammar in class,as memorizing grammar rules is not the proper way to learn English. It is suggested that more emphasis should be laid on developing students' communicative abilities,i.e. their abilities to use English to interact with people. As a result, class time is mainly distributed to students' doing various types of communicative tasks.
However,more and more people have come to realize that grammar is necessary in developing communicative skills.Both fluency and accuracy are important in language learning.The key now is how to combine the two in practice.