The Role of Grammar in Learning Business English

Abstract

The students of business should acquire skills of effective communication. For this, they should have a good command of English grammar. So teaching learning of English grammar is a must for business students. Grammar teaching is an age-old practice. However, from time to time there were strong reactions against grammar. As a result, approaches like Natural Method, Direct Method, Audio-lingual Method, Communicative Method and many other methods of different names dominated the language-teaching scenario time and again as a substitute for the grammar teaching. Anti- grammar trend reached an extreme point in mid seventies and eighties when Communicative language teaching was getting firm root in the scene. At that time the teaching-learning of grammar was almost totally neglected in America, England and many other parts of the world. But soon it was realized that communicative competence alone is not sufficient enough to acquire a mastery over a language without the linguistic competence eg. without acquiring the grammatical rules of the target language. So, there again reappeared the traditional grammar teaching either explicitly or implicitly in the scene. In the present study, an effort has been made to examine the circumstances under which people lost interest in the study of grammar. In this connection, another effort is made here to show how essential it is to teach English grammar to our young boys and girls of Bangladesh were English is hardly used communicatively.