Before I give my views about teaching methods I must throw some words about Grammar teaching and the communicative approaches. In the eyes of some people , they can't be mixed just like fire and  water. Grammar teaching has been overlooked by quite a few famous people, including the editors of our textbook and many researchers in this field who sing highly of the current communicative approach. The communicative approach is so overwhelming that it almost 'drives grammar teaching out of the field of education. But I must say that attention must be paid to the background from which a theory arises.
   The communicative approach appeared in 1970s in Europe. It was proposed by the members of European Economic Community for the purpose of meeting the increasing needs of foreign language infrequent international contact among nations. Its early advocates were British linguistics D.A Wilkins and H.G Widdonson, etc. They saw the necessity to focus in language teaching on communicative proficiency rather than on mere mastery of structures and shared the same idea that students at first should learn the fundamental commoncore in language functions .[Teaching English As a Foreign Language From Theory To Practice By Xie Caifen ]
     I'm nothing but an ordinary English teacher. So I think that I'm not in a position to put forward the so-called teaching approaches. But this doesn't mean that I pay no attention to the teaching methods. On the contrary  I usually think highly of them and I have been l~3ing to find some useful and practical methods for many years by teaching English and reading articles by famous people published in some famous journals. Bu: I still have some questions here.
    First: Can and must the communicative approach be used at all levels m language teaching ?
    The approach was put forward to meet the increasing needs of foreign language in frequent
international contact among nations So I think that only in colleges and in the schools which locate in the cities is it better to have :this approach. applied. The college students and the students in the cities can lave the opportunity to meet the foreigners and to communicate with them. Only they can enjoy the real language situations. And the college students have mastered a certain amount of vocabulary, strong analysis and organization ability as well as some related background knowledge. Furthermore, It is probable for them to meet the foreigners and the foreign language materials and therefore they can have the need to use the language But the students in countryside schools don't have these advantages . And they are confined to the classrooms to digest the piles of exercise crammed to them.
  ,Second: Can our students deal with the grammar--based language tests if the communicative
approach is used in our daily teaching? Undoubtedly, it is for the communication with the foreigners for the students to learn English, which is also the final goal of a language learning. But we must realize the fact that passing the NMET and going to college is what the students are after at present. Otherwise they will have to return home to dig in the soil for nothing. As a matter of fact, the students can't pass the Entrance Examination without doing Crammer exercise and memorizing a certain amount of new words and expressions which often appear in the papers. For example, how can the students deal with the error correcting since the communicative approach places more importance on the  students’ being fluent than being absolutely correct ? Theorically we learn English for the future use. but in fact what the  student gain in the middle school is the basic and necessary knowledge to go college. So to improve the students ' abilities to achieve that goal in our daily teaching, we give the students one set of exercise after another and the students spend  most of their time doing these exercise. For mother example, when the students are doing a cloze, what kind of communicative competence is used ? It is the grammar and idioms  and the context that really matter.
     Third: Different Teaching methods must be used according to different situations. This is what impressed me most when I, together with some other colleagues, went to the English lecture contest for Senior Middle School teachers held in Puyang , a beautiful city in Henan province. Exactly speaking ,three important factors must be taken into account when the teacher thinks of what kind of teaching method that he will use and they are all interrelated and interacted on each other.
     The teachers who are qualified for their jobs can do what they like in the schools with the best students and the most advanced equipment. The teachers who are in bad need of being trained can only do what they can in the schools with the weak students and no equipment .What a striking and sharp contract it was between Liyu from Henan Experimental School and Zhang hongyan from a distant countryside school. The latter can't even operate the computer, wh

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