EFL grammar teaching: Teachers’ beliefs and reported practices

This study investigates EFL teachers’ beliefs and reported practices regarding grammar instruction in Cypriot public secondary schools. Focusing on teachers working in Gymnasiums (lower secondary schools) and Lyceums (upper secondary schools), it examines the factors that shape their beliefs and practices via semi-structured interviews. Based on the findings, teachers value grammar and their beliefs reflect their theoretical understanding of how grammatical competence can be developed. They report teaching following mainly a contextualized and inductive approach except when constrained by time or when occasionally teaching grammar in Lyceum. In that context, teachers believe they are not supposed to be teaching grammar. When they do, they do it briefly, in a decontextualized and deductive way. This study shows how the teaching-to-the-test culture, prominent in the Cypriot education system, coupled with the indirect summative assessment of grammar in Lyceums contributes to ideas that undervalue grammar (teaching) despite its importance in the development of skills and in achieving overall language proficiency.