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Abstract
This paper reports on an investigation of L1 English teachers’ conceptual and evaluative beliefs about teaching grammar, one strand of a larger Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded investigation into the impact of contextualised grammar teaching [RES-062-23-0775]. Thirty-one teachers in English secondary schools were interviewed three times each over the course of a year-long project, discussing their beliefs about writing in general and grammar in particular. The results indicate that while teachers’ initial conceptualisations of ‘grammar teaching’ tend to reflect a prescriptive and traditional model of grammar, their beliefs about how it may be of value tend to evoke a rhetorical model. Their initial prescriptive conceptualisation is also related to negative affective responses to ‘grammar’. This paper suggests that attempts to encourage support or enthusiasm for teaching grammar will therefore need to deal with teachers’ explicit awareness (or lack thereof) of the variety of meanings that ‘grammar teaching’ can have.
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Notes on contributors
Annabel Mary Watson
Annabel Watson is a lecturer in language education at the University of Exeter, UK. She teaches on the Secondary English PGCE programme, and her research has been in the area of writing development, with a particular focus on grammar and teachers’ beliefs.