Intermediate English Grammar

Tunghai University is a college which emphasizes and is proud of its English programs. I was told that 30 years ago when Tunghai graduates went to AIT for the interviews to get their visa to the States, they could get their visa without any difficulties because of their good English speaking ability. In the 1980's, students in Taiwan could read much better than speak or listen, but those who graduated from Tunghai could speak much more fluently and better than others. Due to this reputation, Tunghai's English programs have had several features: the smalled size of the class and the whole English environment. Freshman English classes have no more than 35 students, and all the English teachers teach in English. Both the midterm and final exams include listening, reading, and speaking.
However, this so-called communicative teaching overemphasizes listening and speaking. Students' reading and writing abilities are getting worse and worse. Wanting to help students improve their writing and reading ability, I offered the elective Intermediate Grammar about 13 years ago.  It's a three-credit semester course, but students have to spend more than three hours a week studying grammar to keep up with me. Surprised to know students didn't have any sense about words or sentences before they took this course, but more surprised to see the huge progress they have made in a semester. By the end of the semester, everyone of my students are able to differentiate the structures of phrases, the types of clauses and sentences. Not until they can appreciate different styles of the sentence can they start appreciating writings with different styles. 
By teaching this course more than a decade, I've been more sensitive to the changes of the language and more aware of the logic of the English language and my own native language. I've been able to enjoy the subtlety of the word choices and the use of different patterns more than before. The more I teach, the more I realize I need to learn. I'm the one who ends up benefitting most from this course.