Teaching grammar: A survey of EAP teachers in New Zealand

Abstract

This paper reports on a survey of New Zealand teachers ' attitudes towards grammar and grammar teaching in their own particular teaching contexts. It uses a questionnaire adapted from that used in a survey of teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in British universities (Burgess & Etherington, 2002), followed by a series of email interviews with volunteer respondents. The findings of the present study indicate that, like the teachers reported in the 2002 study, EAP teachers in New Zealand appreciate the centrality of grammar in their language teaching and have a critical awareness of many of the problems and issues involved. There is also evidence to suggest that the teachers favour the treatment of grammar through its emergence in whole texts, rather than its presentation in decontextualised sentences and structures. In this regard, there is support for an approach tending towards Focus on Form (Long, 1991: Long & Robinson, 1998). However, the teachers' comments on the importance of systematic practice of grammatical features and detailed error correction suggests that there is a preference for more extensive treatment of grammatical issues than is usually suggested by proponents of a strictly incidental Focus on Form approach.