Since the 1970’s,as the main course of Chinese middle school,English became important day by day. For many years,traditional teaching method was used in English teaching that is the Grammar Translation Method .It emphasizes the importance of memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary. This viewpoint caused a result:the students can get high marks in examination,but their ability of using language is poor. Although they mastered many grammar rules,remembered a lot of new words,they were unable to communicate with each other by language. This kind of situation must be changed. Therefore,new teaching method was called for.For more and more people realized that English should be regarded as a kind of communicative tool and be taught as a kind of skill,not just a subject in school. Since the early years of the 1970’s,an advanced method--the communicative approach prevailed in the world and later was introduced into our country.However,some teachers still insisted that grammar learning should be paid more attention,because the entrance examination to college still put more emphasis on this. They also thought that communicative approach had nothing to do with the grammar teaching.So the aim of the paper is to illustrate the advantage of the communicative approach by introducing the basic knowledge of this method. Since the 1970’s, as the main course of Chinese middle school, English was important day by day. For many years, traditional teaching method was used in English teaching that is the Grammar Translation Method .It emphasizes the importance of memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary. This viewpoint caused a result: the students can get high marks in examination, but their ability of using language is poor. For the new teaching method was called for.For more and more people realized that English should be seen as a kind of communicative tool and be taught as a kind of skill, not just a subject in school. Since the early years of the 1970’s, an advanced method - the communicative approach prevailed in the world and later was introduced into our country. Yet, some teachers still insisted that grammar learning should b e paying more attention, because the entrance examination to college still put more emphasis on this. They also thought that communicative approach had nothing to do with the grammar teaching.So the aim of the paper is to illustrate the advantage of the communicative approach by introducing. the basic knowledge of this method.