Document Analysis as a Tool in the Evaluation of an English as a Foreign Language Grammar Course

Abstract

The present article reports on an evaluative study undertaken on a language course so as to indicate its strengths and weaknesses with the purpose of improving future ones. Third-year undergraduate students of Applied Linguistics at the Higher Institute of Languages of Tunis are supposed to receive grammatical instruction from a course labelled ‘Communicative Grammar’ (CG) following the theory of Communicative Language Teaching. In order to provide an account of the extent to which the current teaching practice conforms to the theory behind it, the main research instrument used in this study is document analysis. Analysis of the aims stated in the syllabus and the objectives of the course book revealed a significant mismatch between theory and practice. It showed that discrepancies exist especially in terms of content as the linguistic information specified in the syllabus and contained in the course book are not consonant with the type of content postulated by Communicative Grammar. Inadequacies exist also at the methodological level, mainly because the activities used throughout the course include linguistic activities instead of communicative tasks. Since this mismatch is attributed mainly to the teachers’ academic ability, the article ends with some recommendations of suggestions that can be adapted to meet the daily challenges of improving learning in the classroom.