English Grammar Teaching and Classroom Practices an Analysis of Reflective Practices of College Teachers in District Peshawar

Abstract

This study investigated the perceptions of college teachers about English grammar teaching and classroom practices in district Peshawar, Pakistan. The beliefs and insights of fifteen teachers from five different colleges of Peshawar were recorded through semi-structured interviews. To validate the participants’ perception and their practices, observation sessions were also arranged. The analysis showed that majority of teachers either did not translate or failed to translate their perceptions into practice. The study concluded that participants’ classroom practices are not always influenced or shaped by their perceptions and beliefs. There were other contextual issues or constraints directly related to teaching that compelled teachers to teach the way they teach. The analysis of interviews, collected through purposive sampling, showed that teachers who participated in the study suffered from a lack of correspondence between their teaching perceptions and practical teaching. The study concludes that understanding and mastery of grammar at the college level in Peshawar can be improved if teaching of English is made language-oriented as opposed to being purely treated as a separate subject. The study proposed that there is a need to design language-friendly English courses for the intermediate level students involving all the stakeholders including students, teachers and curriculum developers.

Keywords: Classroom practices, Direct method, Explicit teaching, Grammar Teaching, GTM, Implicit teaching, Perceptions.