Grammar Teaching Beliefs and Practices: The Case of a Communicative English Skills Teacher in DMU

Abstract

The study intends to explore how the tensions, debates and beliefs about grammar teaching are adjudicated by a communicative English skills teacher to inform his practices. To that end, the researcher investigated an EFL teacher’s beliefs and classroom practices’ on the teaching of grammar in DMU. The data gathering instruments used were observation and semi structured interview meant to assess the way grammar is taught and uncover the underlying beliefs towards the teaching of grammar.

The teacher is assumes contextualizing grammar items and using situations is a good thing in learning grammar while he also believes explicit grammar instruction might be appropriate only in lower grades. Regarding elements /dimensions of grammar to be taught and techniques and activities to be used the teacher believes that he has to dwell on the harmonized materials surfacing lack of awareness about the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic trinities.

In the actual classroom, the teacher hardly created a context where their communicative needs necessitated the grammar structures. The teacher adopted PPP and situations and contexts were not created.  The presentation stage took much time and effort followed by the practice, but no time for production resulting in absence of integration of skills. The teacher emphasized the structural aspect of grammar items more and syntactic and pragmatic aspects less going

The discrepancies between the beliefs and practices are significant though not enormous. Though the teacher believes in creating context for grammar teaching the observations didn’t prove this. The essence of and principles of PPP is of little importance these days as proved in research. Moreover, the emphasis on form and use can’t guarantee an effective grammar lesson. Based on these findings the researcher recommends further investigation of the issue encompassing students’ views and larger samples.

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/59-01

Publication date: August 31^st 2019