Spoken grammaticality and EFL teacher candidates: Measuring the effects of an explicit grammar teaching method on the oral grammatical performance of teacher candidates

Training in spoken grammatical accuracy at professional levels in English teacher education programs to ensure teaching quality is a program component. However, English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher education programs typically do not focus on this area in Taiwan. The present research employed a pretest-posttest control group experimental design to investigate the effects of an explicit grammar teaching method on a group of English teacher candidates' spoken grammatical accuracy.; The main purpose of the study was to investigate if the proposed teaching method would improve the teacher candidates' oral English proficiency with respect to grammaticality, and if so, to what extent? Moreover, in light of concerns that second language speakers' attention to accuracy may impaired their fluency, the research also studied if explicit grammar instruction would impair speaking fluency of the teacher candidates.; The research site was the Children English Teacher Education Program housed within National Taipei University of Education. Thirty-six participants were randomly assigned to two levels of the treatment on English conditional structures for five sessions of grammar instruction. The instrument used to measure the participants' performance on the pretest and posttest was the one-on-one oral interview. The data was analyzed using the ANCOVA procedures, controlling for any initial difference between two study groups.; The study findings suggested that grammar instruction could improve spoken grammatical accuracy of English teacher candidates in Taiwan, who are advanced English learners. In addition, the increased grammatical accuracy was not obtained at the expense of fluency.