TEACHING SERBIAN GRAMMAR AND STUDENTS’ WELFARE

Abstract

The well-being and emotional reactions of students are important issues in modern teaching. On the other hand, students’ deficient linguistic and functional literacy in Serbia is noticeable. Therefore, the main goal of this paper was to investigate attitudes of students ‒ preservice teachers ‒ towards teaching Serbian grammar from the aspect of their own emotions. The sample consisted of 40 second and third year undergraduate students (department Class teacher) from the Faculty of Education in Jagodina, University of Kragujevac. In the first phase of the research, the observational research method was applied, and in the second, group interviews were conducted together with discourse analysis. The results have shown that, from the students’ perspective, teaching grammar and orthography is neglected in secondary schools, and, unlike teaching literature, it is perceived as uninteresting and unstimulating by the majority of students at all levels of education. The respondents believe that the role of the teacher is crucial for students’ positive emotions. However, even when the teacher is approachable, when they themselves need to communicate in class, negative emotions prevail (discomfort, anxiety, even fear). The factor that most often leads to the lack of will to communicate is the fear of making a mistake and of teacher’s and peers’ reactions. Therefore, most respondents see their position in Serbian language teaching as passive and reactive, and their self-confidence is marked as low.