The teaching of grammar revisited. Listening to the learners’ voice

Abstract

This study stemmed from the result of general weaknesses detected in the teaching of grammar within the specific context of the English Philology curriculum at the University of Santiago. A survey was conducted to find out the views of English majors on grammar teaching with the purpose of implementing the existing programme. The results obtained indicate that students see value in the study of grammar although they are more in line with practical, descriptive and functional approaches rather than with theoretical, prescriptive and formal perspectives to language. Learners’ general assessment of grammar courses in the English Philology curriculum is quite positive. Syntax is students’ preferred area of grammar and self-discovering activities are rated highly; however, they question the relevance of grammatical terminology and the usefulness of contrastive analysis. The paper concludes by suggesting the need to explore alternative approaches to the teaching of grammar which will be based on the use of new technologies, such as the Internet, and general and learner corpora.