Assessing The Implementation Of Communicative Grammar Teaching: At Addis Ababa City Government Preparatory Schools

Abstract

The study explores the implementation of communicative grammar teaching at grade11&12. It examines whether or not the techniques of grammar teaching used motivates learners to use English for communication. It also examines teachers’ awareness in the teaching of grammar in meaningful contexts and situations and ascertains whether grammar activities in the textbook are appropriately designed to provoke learners to express their own ideas in the target language. The study employed two government secondary schools in Addis Ababa city as a sample. The questionnaires were distributed to 360 randomly selected students and 40 English language teachers of grade 11&12 in the schools. In addition, four classrooms were observed from grade 11&12. On top of that, grade 11&12 English textbooks were evaluated to find out whether or not the grammar activities in the textbook meet the principles of communicative language teaching. The results of the study revealed that though the participants recognized the basic principles of communicative language teaching, the communicative grammar teaching was not effectively applied. In other words, there was a miss match between what the teacher and the students believed about and the actual classroom application of grammar teaching. The data shows that the majority of the grammar lessons are not presented in meaningful contexts and situations. The students were not also encouraged to express their own feelings, attitudes and interests using the target structures. They are still given the grammar rules explicitly with examples. They also do several mechanical drills after detailed explanations rather than meaningful and communicative activities. Besides, the classroom observations showed that teachers did not give enough time to the learners to do the exercises efficiently. The textbook analysis also indicated that the majority of the grammar lessons were presented deductively. And mechanical drills are more dominant than meaningful and communicative activities consequently. The researcher has recommended some important solutions to make grammar teaching more communicative. It is hoped that issues raised in this work will provoke thought, investigation and future research.