The key ingredients of an effective grammar lesson: Perceptions from high school ESL students

The history of grammar teaching is fraught with tensions especially in terms of the effectiveness of grammar teaching to students' language development. Recently, there has been a growth in research on learner involvement in language learning and learner beliefs. Within this paradigm, this research examined students' beliefs about grammar instruction methods in the Sri Lankan secondary ESL classrooms. Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were conducted with students about their attitudes to grammar teaching methods and their opinions about effective grammar lessons. The results showed students' positive attitude to explicit grammar teaching. The lessons were judged not only in terms of the engagement of activities employed, but also in terms of the teachers' creative presentation and the usefulness of the grammar item in extending the students' English language repertoire. The findings have implications for language pedagogy and language teacher education in general. The study supports the idea of integration of explicit instruction in grammar teaching with authentic real life examples to increase students' awareness of the importance of grammar.