A Study On English Teachers’ Beliefs About Grammar Teaching In Countryside Senior High School

Teachers’ beliefs, as an important part of teachers’ cognition, have always been focused on by manyscholars. Such as studies about college teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching, relationship betweenteachers’ beliefs about grammar and common practices and etc.Based on the review of the literature, The researcher proposed four research questions（:1）what are theEnglish teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching in countryside senior high school?(2) Does Englishteachers’ individuality difference have some influences on teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching?(3)What is the source of English teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching?(4) Are English teachers’ commonpractices consistent with teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching?The subject of the present study is30English teachers from four countryside high school in Tong WeiCounty. Their years of teaching are from one to30years. To have a deeper explore their beliefs aboutgrammar teaching, among these English teachers, the researcher chose an experienced English teacher andconducted a case study. This study adopted qualitative and quantitative method including questionnaires,interviews, classroom observations and a case study. There are two questionnaires: Teachers’ beliefs aboutgrammar teaching questionnaire and Teachers’ common practices questionnaire which are from Andrew(2003), and delete some irrelevant items.Though the survey, the present study get two kinds of data: quantitative data and qualitative data. Forthe quantitative data, the researcher analyzed it using SPSS13.0. For the qualitative data, the researchersorted out the data and categorized into different kinds according to the sources of teachers’ beliefs, factorsaffecting their practice and discrepancy between beliefs and practical teaching and examined the transcriptsof the discussion with observed teacher and the researcher also analyzed the transcripts of the interview.According to the result of the analysis of the data, the present study found the following major findings:(1)The majority of the teachers have their own beliefs about grammar teaching. Not only do theyaccept the communicative language teaching and concepts of the New Curriculum Reform, but also theystill value the traditional approach to grammar teaching. They have preference to the traditional approach ofgrammar teaching in their common practice.(2)Teachers’ individuality difference has some effect on their beliefs about grammar teaching, such asyears of teaching; yet, the factor of genders has no influence on their beliefs.(3)The teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching are from various sources: such as, their experience as a learner, teaching experience, the reflection of teaching, the result of the feedback of teaching practice andteacher education. But, their experience as a learner and teaching experience are the most important ones.(4) The relationship between teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching and their common practice isclosely related to, but, mostly owning to pressure of the National College Entrance Examination, timeconstraint, students’ poor foundation of English and their different levels of English as well as teachingsoundings factors, there are some differences between teachers’ beliefs about grammar teaching and theircommon practice in some extent and teachers would like to adopt the traditional approach in their practicalteaching.Based on the findings of the present study, enlightenment for teacher education programs, teachers’self-development and context improvement for countryside high schools were put forward to.