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Second Article Review
Conceptions of grammar teaching: a case study of teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices

Teaching is a cognitive activity and teachers’ beliefs impact their instructional decisions in the classroom, is a recent achievement in general education studies. Teachers own complex beliefs about pedagogical issues including beliefs about students and classroom practices. Those beliefs form a structured set of teachers’ experience, school practice, and their own personality. The purpose of this qualitative research is to explore the beliefs and actual practices of two experimented English language teachers regarding to teaching grammar in the primary school in Singapore. As belief refers to an attitude consistently applied to an activity, beliefs affect the way we perceive reality, guide or thoughts and behaviors. What are the two teachers' beliefs about the way grammar should be taught in primary school and what are their actual classroom practices of teaching grammar, these are the questions to answer through this research. A discussion about teachers’ beliefs, the teaching of grammar and an outline of the case of study are carried out along the paper. After them, the analysis of the convergence and divergence of the teachers’ beliefs and actual classroom practices is introduced and discussed.

The instruments to collect information was an interview for each teacher, to know about their beliefs in grammar teaching, also two observations of the teachers’ classes with pre-lesson to obtain information about the lesson to be implemented and a post-lesson interview to reflect on the meaning of the lesson, and a collection of the students’ written work, selected randomly. I would start this paragraph by describing the process in which the intruments were applied (procedure). According to the information gathered both teachers agree that teaching grammar is crucial in order to enable students to use grammar structures correctly in written work. One of the teachers (Daphne) said that she does not teach grammar overtly when her students already know and have the ability to use grammar in writing and listening comprehension. The use of drills is a belief of one of the teachers due to that technique was useful for her when student. For her grammar is synonym to think in the present tense, past tense, and how to form sentences correctly. The other teacher (Velma), said that grammar consists of structures that help students to make sentences meaningful.

The results of the actual practice of both teachers reflect that their classes were teacher-centered, with explanations, instructions and asking questions to students, teaching with some tries of integrated it with speaking, writing or reading. Other external factors were observed as an influence of the teachers’ practice in the classroom as syllabus demand, the school administration, parents, and time. The third paragraph of your article review should compare and/or contrast to some other article. This will require at least one citation.

The author introduced me about the preferences and teaching styles in primary school of two teachers, their practices, and beliefs. They can help me as a base on how many factors affect the practice of teaching a Second Language in primary schools. Be more specific in how this article pertains to what you are doing in action research, but you should keep it in the third person. Be more specific.

References

Farrel, T. and Poh, P. (2005). Conceptions of grammar teaching: a case study of teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language,9(2), 1-13 Brown, J. D., &amp; Rodgers, T. S. (2002). Doing second language research. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Types of Articles
Research Paper

Mohamme, A. and Perur, R. (2011). Difficulties in teaching and learning grammar in an efl context.International Journal of Instruction, 4(2), 69-92.

Action Research

Arıka, A. (2011). A small-scale study of primary school English language teachers' classroom activities and problems. Retrieved from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED519176.pdf

Case Study

Farrel, T. and Poh, (2005). Conceptions of grammar teaching: a case study of teachers’ beliefs and classroom practices. Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language,9(2), 1-13

Field Study

Jaeger, G. (2011). The effectiveness of teaching traditional grammar on writing composition at the high school level. School of Education and Counseling Psychology,

http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED519101.pdf

Literature Review

Ellis, R. (2005). Instructed second language acquisition a literature review. New Zeland:Research division ministry of education.

Feedback
Both article reviews were to go here. --Bnleez 20:17, 2 October 2011 (UTC)