A Qualitative Survey of English Language Teacher's Perception of Grammar in Communicative Language Teaching and its Reflection in the Newly-developed High School English Coursebooks

Teaching grammar in English language teaching (ELT) is known as one of the controversial issues that due to the advent of new approaches in ELT has faced ups and downs. After the emergence of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and its undeniable expansion, teaching or not teaching grammar is still known as an argumentative issue. Thus, this paper attempts firstly to study the rationale for applying grammar in CLT. Then because of inclusion of grammar in the newly-developed CLT-based English course books, it tries to survey the teacher's perception on the topic. Doing so, using a qualitative method and through focus group, eight teachers were interviewed. The findings revealed that the teachers are strongly influenced by a common misconception in a way that most of them maintain that teaching grammar does not correspond CLT. Implementing the new approach in Iranian high schools, this result necessitates firstly the training of teachers on the topic.