Enhancing grammar instruction of a novice teacher in a Lebanese public high school English classroom : action research

النوع : Mémoire

This study is a qualitative action research conducted on a grade-12 English class in a public high school in Tripoli, Lebanon. Having identified difficulties in teaching grammar in the given context, the researcher, a novice teacher, planned to conduct four interventions in order to improve her teaching practice. The investigation had two foci: first, to identify effective techniques that would raise the students’ interest in learning grammar, and second, to find feasible techniques in terms of available resources. The findings from the teacher diaries, classroom observation checklists, and a focus-group interview revealed that the most favored grammar activities by the students were games and simulations. The students liked novelty, fun, the real-life nature of the activities and roles, cooperation, competition and empowerment. The findings concerning the teacher’s resources (time of preparation, materials, collegial support and implementation time) demonstrated that the activities chosen by the students proved to be the most time- and energy-consuming, yet also the most rewarding for the teacher. Both the students’ preferences and the teacher’s choices should be considered in planning the next cycle of research.