Grammar teaching in the 21st century: A comparative study between experienced and inexperienced Turkish EFL teachers' beliefs at secondary school level

Today, it is an undeniable fact that each EFL teacher has their own unique ways of teaching the foreign language. In these varying ways of teaching, there are numerous factors directly affecting the language acquisition. One of these factors is grammar teaching. The importance of grammar teaching when teaching English differs for every teacher. EFL teachers' beliefs about the importance of grammar teaching have been investigated multiple times in the past and countless significant findings have been presented by these studies. However, only a few studies took the teaching experience factor into consideration, thus there is not ample amount of research that compares experienced and inexperienced teachers regarding their beliefs about the importance of grammar teaching. This study aims to fill this particular gap in the literature by comparing experienced and inexperienced secondary school Turkish EFL teachers' views on the significance of grammar teaching when teaching English. The data of the study were collected from 155 in-service EFL teachers, currently working at state and private secondary schools, located in a large city in Turkey. In addition, open-ended questions and semi structured interviews were also administered to a certain number of participants. The findings of the study reveal that Turkish secondary school EFL teachers view grammar teaching important, and that this view is not affected by the teaching experience. Moreover, the study also points out that teachers tend to use explicit grammar teaching ways slightly more, and this also does not differ for experienced or inexperienced teachers. Despite a number of limitations, this study proves its significance in terms of allowing experienced and inexperienced EFL teachers to be aware of their beliefs about grammar teaching when teaching English. Keywords: Grammar teaching, teacher beliefs, teaching English as a foreign language, EFL