Pre-service Teachers' Attitudes Towards Grammar Teaching

As grammar is an instrument to form meaningful sentences (Thornbury, 1999), grammar teaching is an indispensable part of English Language Teaching (ELT). This paper is mainly about the pre-service teachers' understanding of grammar teaching. A questionnaire was used to investigate the attitudes and opinions of pre-service teachers studying ELT in Balikesir University. The findings in general show that pre-service teachers show an affirmative attitude towards grammar teaching although they strongly believe that it should not be taught directly or overtly. Attitudes change depending on the age and purpose of the learners. It is also seen that there is a gap between the practice and theory the reason of which may be the testing policy in Turkish educational system. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.