I want to make a short elaboration in relation to an article written by Simon Borg in entitled Teachers theories in grammar teaching.

This article talks about teachers theories in its relation to Teacher Development (TD) work instead of talking about a specific methodology of grammar teaching. It examines the relationship of teachers theories to their instructional decisions, how would their personal belief and enhanced experience influence their classroom practice (2000, p. 157). This article is written based on the research conducted with five EFL teachers in Malta. Although it is not directly related methodology of grammar teaching, I would like to see the point of views of the responders (the observed teachers perspectives, as the main source of data in this article) to the position of grammar work in their practice. Borg specifically highlighted some points made by one particular teachers regarding to their practice of grammar teaching in the classroom. Here are some important notices extracted from the teacher (2000, p. 158); first, students would preferably choose grammar work and the formal instruction facilitates their need. Second, by doing error-based grammar exercise, the students enthusiasm increases. Third, grammar work increases the students awareness to their error, allowing them to make corrections. Fourth, analogy to the L1grammar is useful to make the students aware of the L2 structure, of course with the important notice of interference. Fifth, the grammar work can be a good measurement for the teacher to analyze the students needs. This point of view shows that although this teacher aware of grammar teaching does not have a significant influence on fluency (2000, p. 158), but still he puts grammar work as a main aspect in his classroom practice. It also shows that teachers approach to grammar teaching in some parts of the world does not only consider on the communicative approach that allows students to develop skill to use language in communication. Some teachers still consider the unanticipated influence of focus on accuracybased grammar activities.

The point that I want to explain is that in some cases grammar activities should not completely be abandoned. The exposure to language in use plays a very important role in students development (Harmer, 2007, p. 69), but the exposure of language in use here does not mean that grammar teaching should be taken for granted. In some cases, grammar activities still regarded as an important aspect to flourish students self-esteem to use the target language in more communicative context. I initially have shifted my perspectives about the position of grammar in English Language Teaching. I begin to think that teaching grammar is completely a waste of time, since it makes no significant impact to my students development, but I think need to reconsider this again. The position of grammar in language has actually shifted from time to time, and the need to learn it as rule-governed values is questionable; as Ur (1996, p. 76) states; and it is not necessarily true that grammatical structures need to be taught as such, or that formal rules need to be learned. Or is it? What I understand now, is that nothing is wrong with grammar activities, what matters the most is how teachers can pack up the grammar teaching in most interesting ways. It means that the grammar rules should not be regarded as the main emphasis of what the students should acquire, but it should be disguised in some sort of way such as discussing a specific grammar focus after a more communicative activity. This can also be done by error-based grammar activities, which is rather on-demand instead of planned. The first thing that I want to change after getting back to my teaching activity is to adjust the position of direct rule-based grammar teaching, that tends to confuse students, to a more invisible position, so that the students are not aware that they are studying some instances of grammar aspects.

Reference list Harmer, Jeremy. (2007). The Practice of English Language Teaching (4th Edition). Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman. Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching. (pp. 76-78). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Borg, S. (2000). Teachers theories in grammar teachiing. ELT Journal, 53(3) (pp 157-167). UK: Oxford University Press.