Contextualizing an EFL teacher's beliefs about grammar teaching

Abstract

This article reports on a qualitative study that focused on an EFL teacher's beliefs and her practices concerning grammar teaching. The study aimed at investigating how the teacher's beliefs could be contextualized with classroom data. In the first stage of data collection and analysis, an open questionnaire was given to the teacher. Then, as a means of contextualizing the beliefs found in the analysis of the questionnaire data, the second stage of data collection and analysis focused on episodes from the teacher's classes. The analysis of the data shows that, according to this teacher, grammar teaching should be used as a facilitative device in order to help students in their learning process. The results of this study also indicate that the teacher's beliefs are influenced by three interactive sources: cognitive, contextual and experiential.