A Comparative Study on Beliefs of Grammar Teaching between High School English Teachers and Students in China

Grammar is “a system of rules governing the conventional arrangement and relationship of words in a sentence” (Brown 1994) which can facilitate the acquisition of a foreign language and is conducive for cultivating comprehensive language competence. Most teachers regard grammar as a frame of English learning. The grammar teaching beliefs held by teachers can affect their practical teaching behaviors in class, thus can have different teaching results in the end. Therefore, through quantitative and qualitative research, this paper aims to investigate the present status of grammar beliefs of high school students as well as teachers’ beliefs and their grammar teaching behaviors, analyze and compare the similarities and differences between them. The result shows that teachers’ grammar teaching has the tendency of communicative teaching while students’ grammar beliefs have the characteristic of integration of communicative and traditional grammar teaching. Teachers’ grammar teaching behaviors can basically be consistent with their grammar teaching beliefs.


Introduction
proposed that teachers' beliefs were a kind of special and personal implicit presumption about teaching practice.Phipps and Borg (2009) pointed out that teaching behaviors were not purposeful, were controlled over by some teaching beliefs pointing to the certain teaching purpose, contents and target.If the indwelling beliefs just stayed in the period of cognition, they were not teaching behaviors, because teaching behaviors were explicit, could be felt by people, could be observed and recorded, and had effects on students.
Teachers' teaching behaviors to some extent is the external performance of teaching beliefs.In recent years, most studies concern about the relationship between teachers' beliefs and behaviors.However, there are little researches of students' beliefs.This study not only conducts an analysis of teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and behaviors but also focuses on the comparison between teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and students' grammar beliefs.Understanding teachers' and students' beliefs has important significance to practical teaching.Therefore, it is of necessity to explore the present status of high school English teachers' grammar beliefs and behaviors as well as students' grammar beliefs, comparing the similarities and differences between them.Richardson (1996) defined 'belief' as "psychologically held understandings, premises, or propositions about the world that are felt to be true".Sometimes, it is also connected with attitude, knowledge, and perspective.E. Hinkel et al. (2002) defined beliefs as an attitude consistently applied to an activity.They suggest that beliefs, by affecting the way in which we perceive reality, guide both our thoughts and our behaviors.Pajares (1992) thought that teachers' beliefs referred to teachers' firm views on teaching work, the role of the teachers, students, course, learning, which cover teachers' practice and experience to guide teachers' thoughts and behaviors.Richards and Lockhart (1994) think that teachers' beliefs are built on basis of the goals, values, and beliefs teachers hold in relation to the content and process of teaching, as well as their understanding of the systems in which they work and their roles within it.These beliefs and values serve as the background of teachers' decision-making and behavior.According to Williams and Burden (2000), teachers' beliefs could be roughly divided into teachers' beliefs in learning, teachers' beliefs in students and teachers' beliefs in themselves.

Teachers' Beliefs
The definition of teachers' beliefs brought out by Michael Borg in 2003 has been universally acknowledged by researchers in foreign language study that teachers' beliefs, a term usually used to refer to teachers' pedagogic beliefs, or those beliefs of relevance to an individual's teaching", such as views of language, learning and teaching beliefs, curriculum perspective, and views on learners and teachers.
According the definitions of above, it can be seen that most researchers had noticed that teachers' beliefs have impact on their practical teaching.Abroad, there are a number of the studies on teaching beliefs and teaching behaviors.But it is difficult for all the researchers to hold a consistent opinion on the relationship between teaching beliefs and teaching behaviors.Pajares (1992) believed teachers' beliefs affected teaching behaviors more than teachers' knowledge.Burns (1992) also supported teachers' beliefs and teaching behaviors were consistent, teaching beliefs guided teaching behaviors.Teachers' thought and behaviors in class were guided by teaching beliefs.

Grammar Teaching Beliefs and Relevant Studies
Grammar teaching beliefs means a system of guiding principles that teachers regard as reflecting the phenomenon in the process of language teaching practice, including their beliefs, feelings, and understandings about the roles of teachers and students in class, grammar teaching objectives, grammar teaching content, grammar teaching methods, grammar teaching evaluation and so on.
Research made by Macrory (2000) investigated the development of pre-service foreign language teachers' grammar teaching beliefs.Results indicated that more games should be made to arouse students' interest in grammar teaching, and grammar teaching can not be separated from the context.Burgess and Etherington (2002) have studied some teachers' grammar teaching beliefs of England through questionnaire.The result shows that most of the teachers had a positive attitude towards grammar teaching and a deeper understanding of grammar teaching.What's more, the teachers thought that learning grammar was beneficial to students to improve their communicative competence.Andrews (2003) investigated 170 senior high school English teachers of Hong Kong on grammar teaching beliefs.Data from the investigation indicated those teachers' grammar teaching beliefs neither conservative nor radical.Based on Andrews, Gao Qiang's (2008) doctoral dissertation named "Grammar Teaching from the Perspective of Teacher Cognition" made a survey on Chinese EFL teachers and non-English majors.The result showed that not only the teachers accept the general principles of communicative language teaching, but they also integrated traditional ways of grammar teaching.It was also concluded that participants' beliefs about grammar teaching were related to their practical teaching behaviors.However, there were also significant differences between the two.Ji Lixia and Zheng Bin's (2009) conducted a study on the comparison of grammar teaching cognition between teachers and students.The results showed that there were discrepancies between them and students are apt to traditional grammar teaching.Li Yan (2011) of Shangdong Normal University investigated relationship between senior English teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and their teaching practices by quantitative researches and interview.The data from the investigation showed that senior English teachers' grammar teaching beliefs had a great effect on their grammar teaching practice and there was also consistency and inconsistency between them.

Research Questions
The present study intends to explore the answer to the following questions: (1) What is the general picture of high school English teachers' and students' beliefs on the grammar teaching?
(2) What are the differences and similarities between high school English teachers' and students' perceptions toward grammar teaching?
(3) Do high school English teachers' actual grammar teaching behaviors match their beliefs?To what degree?

Subjects
The samples for grammar teaching beliefs and behaviors of teachers and students' grammar beliefs survey consist of 35 English teachers and 400 students which are from the NO.2 middle school of RuiChang in JiangXi province.Among these 400 students survey, 384 effective questionnaires are collected, including 274 students (71.35%) from the first grade and 110 (28.65%) students from the second grades.Among 35 English teachers subjects, there are 6 male (17.2%) and 29 female (82.8%).After the questionnaire, 4 English teachers from different ages will be selected to join in interview in order to further analyze their grammar teaching beliefs and behaviors.

Instruments
This study combines the quantitative and the qualitative methodology which involves three questionnaires and one interview.

Questionnaires
There are three questionnaires including teachers' grammar teaching beliefs questionnaire, teachers' grammar teaching behaviors questionnaire and students' grammar beliefs questionnaire.All these three questionnaires are based on Andrews' framework (Andrews, 2003) and after appropriate adjustments adapted for researching the current situation of high school' grammar teaching in China.

Interview
In order to further investigate teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and behaviors, 4 teachers from different age groups will be interviewed.The interview questions are as follows: (1) Do you think grammar teaching in high school is necessary?What is the purpose of grammar teaching?
(2) In the course of teaching, which way do you take for grammar teaching?Are there any differences between your beliefs and practical teaching of grammar?
(3) Do you have any suggestions for the current situation of grammar teaching?

Data Collection and Analysis
Data collected from the teachers' grammar teaching beliefs questionnaires, teachers' grammar teaching behaviors questionnaires and students' grammar beliefs questionnaires are analyzed by SPSS17.0

General Picture of Grammar Teaching Beliefs of Teachers and Students
In this part two variables will be described, including teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and students' grammar beliefs.All the items of questionnaires will be measured by five-point Likert scale.The highest point of each item is 5 and the lowest is 1.If the average point on meaning-focused approach and inductive learner-centered approach is higher than 3, it indicates that subjects' grammar teaching beliefs have the tendency of communicative teaching.If the average point on form-focused approach and deductive learner-centered approach is higher than 3, it proves that subjects' grammar teaching beliefs are more traditional.If the average point of drilling is higher than 3, which means participants are more willing to accept traditional activities such as pattern drilling exercises.Speaking of metalanguage, the higher the score, the more necessary the participants believe to use metalanguage in grammar teaching.

Descriptive Statistics of Teachers' Grammar Teaching Beliefs
According to the analysis of 35 teachers' beliefs questionnaires, the statistics for teachers' grammar teaching beliefs are presented in Table 1.With the issue of the new national English Curriculum, more teachers emphasize the importance of communication and focus more on meaning of language.Inductive teaching method is student-centered and teachers only act as instructors.Instead receiving grammar rules passively, students can actively find and summarize rules by themselves, which is more effective for them.All these may account for the result above.
Drilling can provide students with concrete situation which is much easier for students to understand and metalanguag can help students have a comprehensive understanding of the grammar system.That's why teachers think highly of drilling and metalanguage.

Descriptive Statistics of Students' Grammar Beliefs
In order to find out the differences between teachers' and students' grammar beliefs, it is necessary to know students' views on grammar.The questionnaires for students are similar to teachers'.The amount of effective questionnaires for students is 384.The statistic of students' grammar beliefs are listed in Table 2: The mean of Metalanguage reaches the highest (3.88).There is no doubt that most students believe professional grammar items can help them understand grammar rules better.In addition, the mean score of students on Metalanguage (3.88) is higher than the mean of teachers' (3.74) (see Table 1).It shows that students' expectation for Metalanguage is much higher than teachers.
Speaking of Form-focused category and Meaning-focused category, the mean score of Meaning-focused ranks the second highest (3.63) while the Form-focused ranks the lowest (3.29).Just like teachers, students also prefer the meaning of language instead of forms.However, students also accept the importance of language forms for the mean score of Form-focused category is above 3.This may be caused by the exam-oriented education in China.Mastering correct language forms can make students get high marks in exams.
On Deductive and Inductive categories, only a slight difference lies between them.The mean score of Inductive is 3.56 while the Deductive is 3.46，which means inductive teaching and deductive teaching are both acceptable to students.In addition, the mean of students on Drilling is 3.53, which indicates that students also think it is necessary to practice grammar rules in pattern drillings, because proper sentences can provide specific context and thus help students better understand the grammar rules.

Comparison between Teachers' Grammar Teaching Beliefs and Students' Grammar Teaching Beliefs
Based on the means of Table 1 and Table 2, we found that there are differences between teachers' and students' grammar beliefs on Form-focused, Meaning-focused and Deductive categories.Compared to teachers' grammar beliefs, students' grammar beliefs are more traditional.In order to explore the similarities and differences between teachers' and students' grammar beliefs, independent sample test was employed in this study.The results are listed in Table 3: .33492 .33487 Table 3 displays the result of the independent sample test between teachers' and students' beliefs on grammar teaching.We can see from the table that the sig.(2-tailed) values of Form-focused, Meaning-focused and Deductive are respectively 0.000, 0.007 and 0.001 (all less than 0.005).It reveals that there exists significant difference on Form-focused, Meaning-focused and Deductive categories between teachers and students.From the perspective of Form-focused and Meaning-focused categories, students' grammar beliefs are more traditional than teachers'.From the point of Deductive category, students prefer deductive teaching method.In terms of Inductive, Drilling and Metalanguage, there is no difference between them (p=0.403,0.103, 0.177﹥0.05).
There are two main reasons for this result.One of the reasons is that with the reform of English teaching and examination in China in recent years, English teaching pays much more attention to students' communicative competence.Teachers will be influenced by new curriculum standard and teaching syllabus during their teaching process.Their teaching perceptions are slowly changing from traditional teaching to communicative teaching.However, students have long been affected by the traditional Chinese examination system and most of them pursue high scores.In high school stage, students don't have much opportunity to practice their communication skills so they don' realize the importance of communicative competence.As a result, their grammar beliefs are more traditional since traditional English teaching put much focus on language forms instead of meaning.
The other is that because of many years of learning, students are accustomed to the direct explanation of grammar rules by teachers.Deductive teaching is teacher-centered in which students only need to remember the rules of grammar and practice them in exercise after class, which doesn't need any more brainwork.If teachers apply inductive teaching for grammar, students will have to summarize the grammar rules by themselves, which is hard for them.What's more, they don't want teachers to consolidate their grammar by giving out many drills which makes them feel dull.That's why there exists significant difference on Form-focused, Meaning-focused and Deductive categories between teachers' grammar beliefs and students' grammar beliefs.

Descriptive statistics of teachers' grammar teaching behaviors
In order to explore the relationship between teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and their behaviors, it is necessary to find out the characteristic of their grammar teaching behaviors.The teachers' grammar teaching behaviors questionnaires are adapted from the grammar teaching beliefs questionnaires, so the statement of each item in grammar teaching behaviors questionnaires is correspondent to the statement in grammar teaching beliefs questionnaires.There are also 34 questionnaires in total.The statistics of teachers' grammar teaching behaviors are as follows: Obviously, in Table 4, the mean score of Meaning-focused category is much higher than the mean score of Form-focused (3.89>2.84),which indicates that the participants' grammar teaching beliefs are more preferred to communicative ways.They put much attention to the meaning of language during their teaching.It is not difficult to find that mean scores of Meaning-focused both in Table 1 and Table 4 are higher than the mean score of Form-focused, which indicates that teachers' practical behaviors of grammar teaching is consistent with their beliefs in terms of Meaning focused and Form-focused.In other words, participant teachers' behaviors are influenced by the beliefs they hold and their beliefs have a guiding role in their behaviors.
However, Table 4 tells that the mean of Inductive (3.49) is lower than the mean of Deductive (3.59) while Table 1 shows that Inductive (3.61) is higher than Deductive (3.18).It demonstrates that although most teachers believe grammar teaching should adopt inductive ways, in practical teaching, they prefer deductive ways.There are many possible reasons for this result.One could be the limited time.Deductive teaching is much more time saving because teachers will impart the grammar rules to students directly.Students only need to practice it after class.The other could be the limitation of students' competence.It is hard for students to summarize the grammar rules by themselves.As a result, teachers are more likely to use the deductive ways in practical teaching.
In terms of Drilling, the mean in behaviors (3.41) is lower than the mean in beliefs (3.65) (see Table 1).It also indicates that though most teachers believe it is necessary to practice grammar rules in pattern drillings.In practical teaching, teachers didn't give as much opportunities for practicing grammar in sentences as they think.
Similarly, the mean of Metalanguage in behaviors (3.65) is also a bit lower than the mean in Table 1 (3.74).This may also largely due to the limitation of time and students' ability.Students may feel it is hard to understand the professional grammar items.

Comparison between Teachers' Grammar Teaching Beliefs and Grammar Teaching Behaviors
Based on the means in Table 1 and Table 4, high school teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and behaviors both have the characteristic of communicative teaching.However, there are also differences on Deductive, Drilling and Metalanguage categories.In this part, the Paired Samples T-test was employed to further explore the relationship between teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and behaviors.The results are presented in Table 5. (1 for beliefs, 2 for behaviors).
According to the Table 5, the sig.(2-tailed) value of Deductive and Drilling are 0.000 (less than 0.05), which indicates that there are significant differences between the teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and their actual teaching behaviors on Deductive and Drilling.However, the sig.(2-tailed) values of other four categories are all higher than 0.05, which means there is no difference between teachers' beliefs and behaviors among them.This is the same result with the descriptive statistics above.It also shows that teachers' grammar teaching behaviors is basically accordant with their beliefs on Form-focused, Meaning-focused, Inductive and Metalanguage.Teachers' practical grammar teaching is accordant with the beliefs they hold.Their beliefs and behaviors both present the tendency of communicative teaching.On the other hand, high school teachers' behaviors show the significant difference with their beliefs on Deductive and Drilling.Teachers' teaching is a complicated process which influenced by both internal and external factors including teachers' views on teaching, experience, teaching environment, students and so on.Due to the influence of all these factors, it is inevitable that teachers' behaviors are accordant with their beliefs sometimes.
It can be concluded that to some extent teachers' cognition have effects on their behaviors.Teachers' teaching behaviors are explicit and they are the reflection of their inner beliefs.

Interviews
In order to further explore the present situation of English teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and their behaviors in high school as well as verify their relationship, we have selected 4 teachers from different age group to take part in the interview.Teacher A, B, C, D is 28 years old, 34 years old, 41 years old and 50 years old respectively.
Their interview text can be summarized as follows: Q1: Do you think grammar teaching in high school is necessary?What is the purpose of grammar teaching?
Teacher A: I think it is certainly necessary to learn grammar rules because the study of grammar can help students better understand the article and analyze the structure of long sentences.
Teacher B: When I first started teaching, the university education may have great impact on me that I thought it is enough as long as you can speak English fluently.After several years' work, I found grammar teaching in high school is still necessary.My personal view is that grammar teaching can improve students' reading and writing skills.Grammar teaching has great positive effects on students' reading and writing because it can help students understand long and difficult sentences easily, improve their reading speed, and provide a better framework for their writing.
Teacher C: There is no doubt that grammar teaching is necessary in high school.Students will be able to segment and analyze sentences easily with the help of grammar learning.Grammar teaching can help students better understand long and difficult sentences at first and then paragraphs, finally expand to the whole passage.
Teacher D: Needless to say, grammar teaching is necessary in high school.Grammar teaching can provide students with systematical knowledge framework which is helpful to students to master the overall knowledge of the language.
For the necessity of grammar teaching, it can be seen from 4 teachers' interviews that all of them think that grammar teaching is necessary in high school and grammars play important roles in their English learning.Teacher A and C both believe that grammar teaching can help students better understand long and difficult sentences thus can better understand the whole passage.Teacher B considers that grammar teaching is beneficial to students' writing and reading skills.Teacher D think that grammar teaching can supply students with systematical knowledge framework which can help them have an overall understanding of language structure.
Q2: In the course of teaching, which way do you take for grammar teaching?Are there any differences between your beliefs and practical teaching of grammar?
Teacher A: Generally, I will take different approaches according to different students but mostly I will take inductive teaching method.At first, I would present some sentences and ask students to find out their characteristics among them.Then I will give out some exercise to students to strength what they have learnt in class, but sometimes it is hard to achieve ideal effects and students are not as active as I thought.
Teacher B: Usually I will ask students to try their best to find the grammar phenomenon in the article by themselves at first.Then I will provide some information and students will combine the knowledge they have learnt or discuss in group to summarize the grammar rules.However, sometimes I would also take deductive teaching methods for some difficult points in class and then practice these points in sentences.My teaching is basically based on what I thought.
Teacher C: In practical teaching, I would give an example at the beginning and then students can discuss with their partners.After discussion, I would expand the grammar points and give some drills to students for consolidation after class.My teaching process can basically be conducted by what I thought but sometimes there are differences because of some factors like time arrangement, students' ability and others.
Teacher D: The current curriculum reform advocates taking the initiative to find the problem and deal with it.I also encourage students to find the grammar rules and make a summary by a guiding way.However, in practical teaching I have to take many factors into consideration.Sometimes in order to ensure the course can be finished by schedule, I would directly explain the grammar rules to students and let them do some drills after class to better understand the rules.
Have been teaching for 30 years, my teaching behaviors can nearly meet my teaching beliefs now.Now my English teaching pays much attention to the meaning of language instead of forms of language.I often encourage students to read more after class and speak more.
It can be seen from the interview that all teachers advocate inductive grammar teaching which is student-centered and their teaching behaviors can be accordant with their beliefs most of the time.However, there are also differences between their beliefs and behaviors.Four teachers all admit that their practical teaching behaviors can't always be accordant with their beliefs.Though they all encourage and take inductive teaching methods most of the time, but in practical teaching they usually have to take inductive methods under the influence of time and students' limited ability.This is more obvious in Teacher C' and Teacher D' interview.This may because that though they agree to the importance of inductive and communicative teaching.With more than 20 years' teaching, they have already had a set of teaching habit that it (delete it) is hard to change.As a result, their classes are more prefer to teacher-centered and deductive teaching.Just as they analyzed, their teaching behaviors are might different from their beliefs because of the influence of concrete teaching environment and conditions such as course arrangement, students' ability.

Q3: Do you have any suggestions for the current situation of grammar teaching?
Teacher A: Because of the current examination system and content, I think it is also necessary to attach more impotence to their communicative skills like listening and speaking.For grammar teaching, I suggest that teachers should add more interesting and creative exercise to arouse students' interest.
Teacher B: With the constant change of English teaching in China, English teachers in high school should also notice the importance of communication.In order to avoid dumb English, teachers should often lead their students to speak more and listen more.When teaching grammars, teachers should be aware of the necessity of encouraging students to spend more time on syntax and meaning, which focus more on students' communicative competence.
Teacher C: I advise teachers in high school should give more time to students to summarize rules by themselves and teachers should be guides instead of dominators.Teachers shouldn't blindly impart much knowledge to students and they can give some examples in class which are closed to our daily life.Thus students are more interested in grammar learning.
Teacher D: Grammar teaching shouldn't focus too much on the forms of language.Instead, grammar teaching should be regarded as a structure for students to communicate.According to the structure, students can read better and speak better.And teachers should try our best to make grammar teaching more active and more interesting which may be achieved by offering interesting and creative drillings.
With the reform of English teaching, more English teachers in high school believe that communicative competence is becoming more and more important for high school students.What's more, most of them think highly of the importance of drillings.As a result, Teacher A, C and D all advocated that teachers shouldn't blindly give too much repeated drills to students.Instead, drills should be interesting so as to arouse students' learning interesting.Teacher B and D suggest that grammar teaching shouldn't pay much attention to language forms.Teacher D also encourage students to read more and speak more.In short, teachers' grammar teaching beliefs present the characteristics of communication.(2003) claimed that effective teaching and learning are from the highly consistent of teachers' beliefs and students' beliefs.Based on the major findings of present study, here are some practical pedagogical implications for senior high English teachers and students.For the part of English teachers, it is necessary for teachers not only to know their own teaching beliefs but also know students' beliefs.They have to pay attention to the differences between their grammar teaching beliefs and students' so as to adopt corresponding teaching method to maximize the teaching effects.In addition, teachers should try to keep their behaviors accordant with their beliefs as possible as they can.For the part of students, they need to realize the significance and functions of grammar teaching.Students should have a correct understanding of grammar learning and find the fun of it.Thus grammar teaching can achieve great effects.

Table 1 .
Descriptive statistics of teachers' grammar teaching beliefsAccording to Table1, it can be seen that all the means are higher than 3.00 except Form-focused category.The mean of Meaning-focused category reaches the highest (3.87) while the mean of Form-focused is the lowest (2.95).The second and third high mean scores are Metalanguage and Drilling respectively 3.74 and 3.65, followed by Inductive (mean=3.61) and Deductive (mean=3.18).From the statistics above, it is obvious that the Meaning-focused category is more acceptable than Formed-focused category (3.87 >2.95), in other words, teachers believe that language teaching should focus more on language meaning instead of language form.In addition, the mean of Inductive category (3.61) is higher than the mean of Deductive category, which is 3.18.It demonstrates that teachers think inductive teaching is more effective than deductive teaching.What's more, the means of Drilling(3.65)and the Metalanguage (3.74) are both high, which indicates that most teachers think traditional activities such as drilling exercises and professional grammar items are important for grammar teaching.

Table 2 .
Descriptive statistics of students' grammar beliefs

Table 3 .
Independent sample test between teachers' and students' beliefs on grammar teaching

Table 4 .
Descriptive statistics of teachers' grammar teaching behaviors

Table 5 .
Paired Samples T-test between teachers' grammar teaching beliefs and grammar teaching behaviors