ABSTRACT

L1 grammar teaching worldwide often takes the form of traditional grammar teaching with decontextualized parsing exercises and rules of thumb. Some researchers have proposed enriching such forms of grammar teaching by relating traditional grammatical concepts to underlying metaconcepts from linguistic theory. The merits of such an approach have become apparent in recent intervention studies, but the question remains how teachers perceive such forms of grammar teaching, which is of particular importance for curriculum development. The present study investigated Dutch teachers’ beliefs in focus groups and a national survey (N = 127). It is found that Dutch language teachers see important benefits of a metaconceptual approach to grammar teaching, particularly as a means to improve students’ grammatical understanding. However, results also indicate that while teachers may see clear pedagogical and conceptual advantages of working based on underlying metaconcepts, their own teaching practice appears to be much more traditional. This discrepancy is explained by assuming that contextual factors have a restraining effect on what teachers can or want to do in reality. Once such contextual factors no longer play a part, teachers’ views tend to be much more geared towards a metaconceptual approach. The paper concludes with some implications for future research.

摘要

世界范围内的 L1 语法教学通常采用传统语法教学的形式，带有去语境的解析练习和经验法则。一些研究人员建议通过将传统语法概念与语言理论中的基本元概念联系起来来丰富这种形式的语法教学。这种方法的优点在最近的干预研究中变得很明显，但问题仍然是教师如何看待这种形式的语法教学，这对于课程开发特别重要。本研究调查了荷兰教师对焦点小组的信念和一项全国性调查（N= 127)。研究发现，荷兰语教师看到了元概念方法对语法教学的重要好处，特别是作为提高学生语法理解的一种手段。然而，结果还表明，虽然教师可能会看到基于基本元概念的工作具有明显的教学和概念优势，但他们自己的教学实践似乎要传统得多。这种差异可以通过假设情境因素对教师在现实中可以或想要做的事情产生限制作用来解释。一旦这些背景因素不再起作用，教师的观点往往更倾向于元概念方法。本文最后对未来的研究提出了一些启示。