United Doubts: Grammar Teaching in Pakistan

Teachers & Learners’ Perspective

Muhammad Asim Mahmood,
Assistant professor, Government College University, Faisalabad, Pakistan,

Farhat Jabeen,
lecturer, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

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Abstract

This study aims to investigate the nature of Pakistani teachers and learners’ responses towards grammar teaching. Our population sample consists of 25 male and 25 female teachers from public sector institutions in Faisalabad city and 25 male and 25 female learners of 10^th grade from those public sector institutions. We have designed a questionnaire to explore their responses. The questionnaire seeks to draw out the respondents’ opinions about whether grammar should be a part of English language instruction or not. It also aims to find out teachers and learners’ responses regarding structural and functional grammar, competence and performance based grammar instruction, the teaching of simple and complex structures, contextualized grammar instruction, explicit and implicit grammar teaching, integrated vs. separate lessons, the use of teacher feedback and the appropriate age to start grammar instruction. The results were analysed with the help of SPSS 19.0. We analysed the frequency of learners and teachers’ responses and further cross - tabulated those responses with the gender variable. During the analysis of results, we realized that our respondents have no idea about various aspects of grammar instruction. Therefore, instead of interpreting their responses as reliable indicators of their opinion, this study helps highlight the ignorance of Pakistani English language teachers with the central concepts involved in language teaching and their inability to keep abreast of the latest trends in the world of ELT at international level. This paper also stresses that teacher training is an effective solution to address this problem.

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