Aysel Eyerci

In spite of the huge amount of budget allocated for the policies and practices, teaching English as a foreign language in classroom is one of the most arduous tasks of educational activities in Turkey. Starting at the very beginning years of primary education, English courses are conducted until the end of one’s whole school life. Yet, all these courses fail to satisfy developing good communication skills of learners. Language learners feel fed up with grammar rules. After years of formal education, they cannot use English for even basic communication purposes. They lack communicative competence and performance skills. Along with other subordinate factors, ‘focus on grammar’ tendency of language teachers are taught to be the main cause of this lack. For a majority of schools, language teaching is limited to teaching grammar and form of the language. Language practice and communication, the use of language itself, is rather limited. The aim of this study is to explore the reasons why teachers mostly focus on grammar and ignore communicative skills and practices in their English language teaching classrooms. For this purpose, a qualitative research was conducted with the participation of twelve English language teachers from eight public primary schools of Turkey. The participants were selected randomly from public primary schools of a central city in Turkey. The data was collected with semi-structured interview protocol prepared by the researchers. The data was transcribed and then analysed descriptively. The reasons why teachers mostly focus on grammar and ignore communicative skills and practices in their English language teaching classrooms have been identified under main themes. The findings are discussed in the light of relevant literature. The study concludes with some implications for further research and practice. This study is expected to contribute to the research on language teaching practices.