Two efl teachers’ beliefs about grammar – a comparison of their beliefs with their actions in class

UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SANTA CATARINA CENTRO DE COMUNICAÇÃO E EXPRESSÃO Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente Foreign Language Teacher Development Professor: Gloria Gil

Two EFL Teachers’ beliefs about grammar – A comparison of their beliefs with their actions in class Final Paper

ARIENE CRISTINA DELLA LIBERA DOS SANTOS

Florianópolis December – 2006

2 1) Introduction Grammar has been widely investigated from several different perspectives. .Many recent studies have focused on grammar, generally investigating the ‘best method’ of teaching (Freeman & Richards, 1996). Although this great number of studies involving grammar has been carried out, only few studies have addressed grammar from the teachers’ perspective, approaching specifically language teachers’ beliefs about grammar and how grammar is taught by these teachers (Borg, 1999; Willians, 1994, for example). According to Freeman and Richards (1996), it is of great importance to investigate what the teachers’ beliefs about language are for a better understanding of language teaching. Also, as Borg (1999, p. 161) states, ‘teachers must distinguish between their actual practices and what they believe they do’. Hence, the aim of this qualitative research paper, based mainly on Borg’s (1999) and Carazzai’s (2002) research, is to investigate two teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching and if these teachers’ beliefs about grammar and about how they teach grammar correspond to their behavior in practice.

2)

Review of Literature

Teachers’ beliefs about grammar In order to investigate teachers’ beliefs about L2 grammar, it is essential to define what is understood by the terms grammar and belief in this paper. The definition of belief will follow Pajares (1992, p. 316), who states that belief is ‘an individual’s judgment of the truth or falsity of a proposition’. Grammar will be acknowledged in this paper by ‘a combination of morphology and syntax’, following Palmer, 1971;