How May Second Language Acquisition Theories Inform Language Teaching? An Example of Teaching Grammar

This paper bridges second language acquisition (SLA) theories with the language education field for pedagogical implications, using an example of the input hypothesis (Krashen, 1985) and the Grammar Translation Method.SLA has become an inevitable component in many Language Teacher Education programs for its principles guiding how a language is acquired or should be taught and what support should be provided to learners to acquire the target language successfully.In addition, given the aim of developing students' communicative competence, challenges may exist as the provision of input may not always result in a development in this competence.To examine how the input is provided in language classes, the paper reports on a case of two English teachers in a rural high school on their practices and perspectives in teaching grammar to students.It was revealed that input was provied in terms of grammar knowledge in a restricted form of teaching, leading to limited understanding on students' acquisition of this input as well as their communicative competence.Learning from the teachers' responses, the study provides pedagogical implications in the case of teaching grammar to support learners' acquisition of the target language and to assist in developing their communication skills using the taught grammar knowledge..