SYSTEM

System 27 (1999) 19±31

Studying teacher cognition in second language

grammar teaching
S. Borg*
School of Education, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Received 8 May 1998; revised 10 July 1998; accepted 1 September 1998

Abstract

Although formal instruction in second language (L2) teaching has been extensively
researched in the last 20 years, this work tells us little about the actual processes of grammar
teaching as these are perceived by teachers. At the same time, educational research has shown
that much can be learned about the nature of instruction through the study of teacher
cognitionÐthe store of beliefs, knowledge, assumptions, theories, and attitudes about all
aspects of their work which teachers hold and which have a powerful impact on teachers'
classroom practices. Studies of teacher cognition have also begun to appear in the ®eld of L2
teaching in recent years, yet formal instruction, inexplicably, has received little attention. This
paper makes a case for research on teacher cognition in grammar teaching. Such research,
which focuses on understanding how teachers approach formal instruction, and why, can tell
us much about the nature of grammar teaching as teachers perceive it, information which can
be put to e€ective use in teacher education and development programmes. # 1999 Published
by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Teacher cognition; Teacher thinking; Grammar teaching; Second language teaching;
Classroom research

1. Introduction

The impetus for this paper can be summarised in three observations about
research on L2 teaching and teaching in general in the last 20 years:

1. Formal instruction has been one of the most researched aspects of L2 teaching.
Yet not only has this research been largely inconclusive in identifying optimal

*E-mail: S.Borg@education.leeds.ac.uk

0346-251X/99/$Ðsee front matter # 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S034 6-251X(98)0004 7-5
20 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31

strategies for grammar learning, it has actually provided very little insight into the
actual processes of L2 grammar teaching as these are perceived by teachers.
2. Educational research has acknowledged a conception of teachers as active,
thinking, decision-makers whose instructional decisions are powerfully in¯u-
enced by their cognitions about teaching and learning. Research on teaching has
thus focused increasingly on describing what teachers actually do in classrooms
and on understanding the cognitions which underlie these practices. This
research has in turn been utilised by teacher educators to promote the develop-
ment of re¯ective skills in teachers at both preservice and inservice levels.
3. Although teacher cognition research in the ®eld of L2 teaching has increased in
recent years, the teaching of grammar has attracted meagre attention. Thus we
possess little descriptive data about L2 teachers' practices in formal instruction
and even less insight into the cognitions which underlie these practices. In the
light of observations 1 and 2, this is clearly a gaping hole in the research
agenda for L2 teaching.
My aim here is to make the case for the study of teacher cognition in L2 grammar
teaching by expanding on each of these points with reference to the literature
on both grammar teaching and teacher cognition. Findings from a recent project on
teacher cognition in L2 grammar teaching are also presented to illustrate the
potential such work has for expanding our current understandings of the processes
of formal instruction.

2. L2 Grammar teaching

Grammar has been the focus of vast amounts of research on L2 acquisition (see
Ellis, 1994, for review). An illustrative list of issues addressed by this work is pre-
sented in Table 1.
There are three points I want to make about this research:
1. Firstly, this work has been largely inconclusive (Ellis, 1998). Although it is now
generally accepted that formal instruction does facilitate in some way the pro-
cess of learning a L2 (Ellis, 1994), a reading of the sources listed in Table 1
shows that consensus about how best to teach grammar has not been achieved.

Table 1
Research on formal instruction

Issues Sources

Should teachers teach grammar at all? Krashen, 1981; Bialystok, 1982;

Pienemann, 1985; Lightbown and
Spada, 1990; Gass, 1991
Are inductive approaches to grammar Sha€er, 1989; DeKeyser, 1995
better than deductive approaches?
Should teachers correct students' grammatical errors? Chaudron, 1977; DeKeyser, 1993
Should teachers use grammatical terminology in class? Berman, 1979; Garrett, 1986
Do grammar practice activities facilitate L2 learning? Ellis, 1991; K. Johnson, 1994
 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31 21

For example, while Garrett argues against the use of grammatical terminology
in L2 teaching, Berman outlines the value of doing so; and while K. Johnson
argues that grammar practice activities enhance L2 acquisition, Ellis reviews
research which does not support such an assertion. Thus, after over 20 years
of research, ``it is probably premature to reach any ®rm conclusions regarding
what type of formal instruction works best'' (Ellis, 1994, p. 646). In attempting
to understand how teachers approach formal instruction, and why, then, we
cannot even start with the assumption that their decisions are informed by a
well-de®ned research base providing ®rm guidelines for practice.1
2. Secondly, much of this research has been experimental in nature. That is, to
identify e€ective strategies for teaching grammar, researchers have set-up
instructional contexts in which the e€ects on student achievement of di€erent
strategies can be compared (for two examples, see Fotos, 1993; DeKeyser,
1995). Such work tells us nothing about teachers' decision-making processes in
teaching grammar in natural settings. In fact, a criterion for judging the valid-
ity of much of this research has been the extent to which teachers' ability to
make decisions is curtailed (see, for example, Sha€er, 1989, p. 400, who out-
lined how she ``minimized the teacher factor as much as possible'').
3. A substantial amount of descriptive research on grammar teaching in naturally-
occurring settings has also been conducted (e.g. Faerch, 1985, 1986; Peck,
1988; Lightbown and Spada, 1990; Lyster and Ranta, 1997). Yet none of these
studies have investigated the teacher cognitions underlying the practices
described. Peck (1988) does claim to provide an emic (i.e. insider) perspective
on teachers' work, but what he actually provides is his own interpretation of
how they approach grammar, ``in terms they [teachers] do not habitually use''
(p. 128).

What we have, then, is a large volume of research on formal instruction which

paradoxically fails to contribute at all to an understanding of the process of gram-
mar teaching as it is perceived by teachers.

3. Teacher cognition

For many years educational research was characterised by studies which explored
e€ective teaching

by correlating particular processes, or teaching behaviors, with particular pro-

ducts, usually de®ned as student achievement as measured by standardized tests
... Underlying this view of research is a view of teaching as a primarily linear

1
The word start is important here, for even if a well-de®ned research base about e€ective grammer
teaching did exist, studies of teacher cognition in other disciplines (e.g. Crawley and Slayer, 1995, in sci-
ence education) suggest that teachers' instructional decisions would not necessarily be in¯uenced by this
research.
22 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31

activity wherein teaching behaviors are considered `causes' and student learning
is regarded as `e€ects'. This approach emphasizes the actions of teachers rather
than their professional judgments and attempts to capture the activity of
teaching by identifying sets of discrete behaviors reproducible from one teacher
and one classroom to the next (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1990, p. 2).

This is, of course, the notion of teaching implicit in most research on formal
instruction. The last 20 years, though, have seen the gradual emergence of an alter-
native conception of teaching as a process of active decision-making informed by
teachers' cognitionsÐthe beliefs, knowledge, theories, assumptions, and attitudes
about all aspects of their work which teachers have. This conception of teaching has
been developed through an ever-growing body of research; as Table 2 illustrates,
very selectively, teacher cognition has been studied in a range of diverse instructional
settingsÐin both preservice and inservice contexts, at various levels (kindergarten,
elementary, secondary, high school, college, and adult education), and with respect
to a wide range of subjects (e.g. English, mathematics) and speci®c aspects of sub-
jects (e.g. vocabulary, geometry).
The signi®cant body of such work which now exists indicates that teachers' cog-
nitions consist of a set of personally-de®ned practically-oriented understandings of
teaching and learning which exert a signi®cant in¯uence on instructional decisions
(Clark and Peterson, 1986; Clandinin and Connelly, 1987; Kagan, 1990; Pajares,
1992; Fang, 1996). The widely acknowledged implication of this work is that an
understanding of the often implicit psychological bases of teachers' work is required
if we are to go beyond a super®cial behavioural conception of instructional pro-
cesses. That is, comprehending the process of teaching means both describing
teachers' actions and accessing the cognitions underlying these.
The insight into teaching which teacher cognition research provides, in turn, has
various applications, summarised in Table 3, for teachers, teacher educators, and
policy makers.

Table 2
The scope of teacher cognition research

Source Focus

Beach, 1994 Elementary teachers' beliefs about teaching reading.

Brickhouse, 1990
Briscoe, 1991
Brown and Wendel, 1993
Dirkx and Spurgin, 1992
Konopak and Williams, 1994
Peterson et al., 1989
Smith and Shepard, 1988
Swa€ord et al., 1997
Uhlenberg et al., 1993
Wyatt and Pickle, 1993
Science teachers' beliefs about the nature of science.
A high school chemistry teacher's beliefs and metaphors.
Beginning secondary teachers' beliefs about lesson planning.
Adult basic education teachers' beliefs about students.
Elementary teachers' beliefs about vocabulary teaching.
Elementary teachers' pedagogical content beliefs and
pedagogical content knowledge in mathematics.
Kindergarten teachers' beliefs about children's school readiness.
Inservice teachers' content and pedagogical
knowledge of geometry.
Preservice and classroom teachers' beliefs about discipline.
College reading instructors' beliefs about teaching.
 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31 23

Table 3
Applications of research on teacher cognition

Insight into teachers' conditions allow us

^ to understand discrepancies between theoretical recommendations based on
research and classroom practice and hence to attempt to explain the lack of
in¯uence on practice of educational innovation (Clark and Peterson, 1986),
^ to provide quality portraiture of teaching in all its complexity (Clark and Lampert, 1986),
^ to provide policy makers in education and teacher education with the basis for
understanding how best to implement educational innovation and to promote
teacher change (Butt et al., 1992),
^ to engage teachers in a form of re¯ective learning, by making them aware of the
psychological bases of their classroom practice; to help teachers understand their
mental lives, not to dictate practice to them (Clark and Lampert, 1986),
^ to understand how teachers develop (Tobin and LaMaster, 1995),
^ to develop a new conceptualisation of teaching which supports and improves the
quality of teachers' professional practice (Calderhead, 1987),
^ to provide the basis of e€ective pre- and inservice teacher education and
professional development (Goodman, 1988).

Most relevant for this current paper is the observation that teacher cognition
research can inform the process of teacher education. In other words, it has practical
and not simply theoretical value (thus such research has pragmatic validityÐKvale,
1996). I discuss this issue in more detail later.

4. Teacher cognition in L2 teaching

Although the need for research into the psychological context of L2 teaching has
been pointed out over the years (Seliger, 1979; Faerch, 1985, 1986), it is only rela-
tively recently that such work has begun to appear. Table 4 summarises the insight
provided by this work into the relationship between cognition and practice in L2
teaching.2
This research supports the ®nding in the educational literature that, although
contextual factors may prevent teachers from acting in accordance with their cog-
nitions, the latter are a very powerful in¯uence on classroom practice. However,
none of these studies have focused speci®cally on grammar teaching. In fact, the
only research on language teaching which does shed light on teachers' perspectives
on formal instruction is that which examined the knowledge about language' (KAL)
component of the National Curriculum in the UK (Mitchell et al., 1994a,b Brum®t
et al., 1996). Given my current concerns, the most signi®cant ®nding here was that
inadequate knowledge of metalinguistic terminology on teachers' part made them
reluctant to use such terminology in their teaching. There was one other paper which

2
The ®ndings I summarise here relate solely to the relationship between cognition and practice; for
many of these studies, this was but one of a range of issues investigated.
24 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31

Table 4
L2 teacher cognition research

Source Findings

Bailey, 1996 Teachers' in-class decisions to depart from their lesson plan were based on
these principles: (1) serve the common good; (2) teach to the moment;
(3) further the lesson; (4) accommodate students' learning styles; (5) promote
students' involvement; and (6) distribute the wealth.
Breen, 1991 Teachers' instructional decisions were in¯uenced by concerns about:
learners' a€ective involvement, background knowledge, and cognitive
processes; conceptions of language as use and usage; and teacher role as
guide and manager.
Burns, 1992 Teachers' practices were in¯uenced by a network of beliefs they held
about language, beginning language learning, and learners.
Burns, 1996 Teachers' practices were shaped by beliefs relating to the institutional
culture of the school they worked in, their own personal beliefs about
language, learners, and learning, and their beliefs about speci®c
instructional tasks and materials.
K.E. Johnson, 1992 A signi®cant statistical relationship was found between teachers'
theoretical orientations to L2 learning and teaching and their
instructional practices.
K.E. Johnson, 1994 Teachers' instructional practices were in¯uenced by their personal images
of L2 teaching and learning.
Nunan, 1992 Most of the interactive decisions made by a teacher re¯ected this teachers personal
philosophy of language teaching.
Richards, 1996 Teachers' instructional decisions were guided by maximsÐpersonal
working principles which re¯ect teachers' individual philosophies of
teaching.
Practice sometimes does not re¯ect teachers' maxims because of
contextual factors such as the need to prepare students for examinations or
student characteristics (e.g. shyness).
Smith, 1996 Teachers' beliefs about second language teaching and learning were the
critical factor in in¯uencing the types of decisions these teachers made.
The contextual factor which had most impact on teachers' decisions was
student characteristicsÐtheir goals, interests, and a€ective states.
Ulichny, 1996 A teacher planned her lesson with reference to her principles about L2
teaching and the nature of L2 reading. During the lesson, the teacher
modi®ed her plan on the basis of unexpected diculties which the students
had understanding the text she selected; to help students cope, she modi®ed
her approach and engaged in practices which did not re¯ect her principles.
Woods, 1996 Teachers' interpretations of classroom events were powerfully in¯uenced
by their beliefs, assumptions and knowledge about L2 teaching and learning.

promised to say something about teacher cognition in L2 grammar teaching

(Williams, 1994), but closer analysis indicated otherwise. This paper reports on the
views about grammar and grammar teaching expressed by teachers on an MA course
through their responses to a structured questionnaire containing 6 items (plus a 7th
item labelled `Other comments?'; Williams, 1994, p. 118). Although the outcomes of
this study may be useful for individuals planning MA courses, such work does
not investigate teachers' classroom practices or the cognitions which shape these.
Thus, despite its super®cial promise (it appears in a text called `Grammar and the
 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31 25

Language Teacher' in a section entitled `Teachers' Knowledge of Grammar'), this

study merely provides further evidence of how limited our understanding of
teachers' practices and cognitions in L2 grammar teaching currently is.

5. A new perspective

A recent project illustrates the new perspective on research on L2 grammar

teaching which I am arguing for here (Borg, 1998a,b; 1999b). This work departs
from existing studies of formal instruction in three ways:

1. It acknowledges the centrality of both grammar in L2 teaching and of teacher

cognition in the study of instruction.
2. It focuses on what teachers in real3 classrooms do in teaching grammar and
examines the thinking underlying these observed practices.
3. It presents extensive samples of primary data which portray formal instruction
and capture teachers' commentaries on their work.
This project is thus descriptive and interpretive in scope. That is, it considers what
teachers actually do in teaching grammar and explores the cognitive bases of these
actions. This research perspective allows us to develop a more complete con-
ceptualisation of L2 grammar teaching than we currently possess. To illustrate this
point, here are some examples of the ®ndings which have emerged from my work.
1. It is clear that grammar teaching is a truly multi-faceted decision-making pro-
cess. In discussing their practices in teaching grammar, the teachers I have
worked with revealed that, tacitly or overtly, they made decisions about
. whether to conduct formal instruction at all,
. what language points to focus on,
. how to structure grammar lessons,
. how to present and/or analyse grammar,
. how metalinguistically explicit to be,
. what kind of grammar practice activities to utilise,
. how to deal with students' grammatical errors.
2. Grammar teaching is thus not a monolithic enterprise; rather, it is de®ned by
teachers' interacting decisions about a range of issues, each of which con-
stitutes a focus for further research in its own right (e.g. Borg (1999b) I focus
solely on the issue of teachers' practices and cognitions regarding metalinguis-
tic explicitness).
3. Pedagogical dichotomies (e.g. inductive vs. deductive) implied in existing
research on grammar teaching become blurred in practice. That is, teachers

3
By real I mean that teachers were studied in the course of their routine duties. Of course, I am aware
of the observer's paradox (Labov, 1972)Ðthe inevitable e€ect with the presence of the observer, no matter
how unobtrusive this is, will have on the phenomenon under observation. In this sense, no observed
phenomenon is wholly `real'.
26 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31

alternate between or blend these traditionally exclusive strategies depending on

speci®c instructional factors. For example, one teacher I worked with felt that
inductive learning was more appropriate but believed that students resented a
lack of teacher-directed grammar work; hence, she did occasionally conduct
mini-lectures on grammar points such as the syntax of multi-word verbs.
Another teacher also preferred to encourage students to discover things for
themselves, yet he had no objection to explaining grammar when he felt stu-
dents were unable to reach useful conclusions on their own. Super®cially, the
pedagogical variability exhibited by these teachers might be interpreted as
methodological inconsistency, but insight into the teachers' cognitions enables
us to make sense of their behaviours.
4. Teachers' decisions in teaching grammar were in¯uenced by their often-
con¯icting cognitions about language, learning in general, L2 learning, gram-
mar teaching, students, and self. Thus grammar teaching often re¯ected the
resolution of con¯icts among competing cognitions held by the teachers. For
example, one teacher believed it was important for students to learn grammar,
yet he taught grammar very rarely because of his self-perceptionÐhe was
insecure in his own knowledge about grammar and was afraid he would be
caught out by students' questions. Another teacher taught grammar regularly
despite his belief that it did little to promote students' acquisition of the lan-
guage. He did so because he believed it was important to address students'
expectations that their course would involve attention to grammar. Once
again, it is only by studying teacher cognition that we can gain access to these
often hidden motivations for teachers' instructional decisions.
5. The cognitions underlying formal instruction were generated by key educa-
tional and professional experiences in the teachers' lives. Three categories of
experience were particularly in¯uential:
. Schooling, particularly teachers' language education. For example, a teacher
who had learnt foreign languages successfully through grammar-translation
methods was willing to incorporate elements of such methods into his gen-
erally communicative approach to L2 teaching. Another teacher minimised
the use of grammatical terminology in her work because her metalinguisti-
cally rich experience of L2 learning had not enabled her to become a com-
petent speaker of the language she studied.
. Teacher education also had a powerful in¯uence on the development of
teachers' cognitions in grammar teaching. The teachers I worked with had
all experienced L2 teacher education programmes which encouraged them
to adopt a communicative, meaning-oriented, and student-centred
approach to L2 instruction. One lasting outcome of these programmes, for
example, was that the teachers shared the view that it was wrong to inter-
rupt students to correct their grammatical errors during oral ¯uency work.
However, not all the principles instilled by teacher education programmes
had an enduring e€ect on the teachers (see next point).
. Classroom experience also had a strong e€ect on teacher cognition in
grammar teaching. For example, one teacher who had been originally
 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31 27

trained to avoid explicit talk about grammar had come to understand that
students often wanted and felt comfortable with such information; hence he
had changed his views on this issue. This is but one example of the way in
which the cognitions and practices in teaching grammar held by teachers
early in their careers were often modi®ed, intuitively or through conscious
re¯ection, on the basis of subsequent classroom experience.

These ®ndings are but preliminary insights into the nature of formal instruction,
yet they do illustrate the potential which the study of teacher cognition has for
extending our current understandings of L2 grammar teaching. Such work also
leads to the development of more focused research questions for the study of gram-
mar teaching. Thus, at the start of my project, I was guided by general questions
such as `how do teachers teach grammar?' However, by studying what teachers do
and exploring the kinds of instructional decisions which grammar teaching involves,
I have formulated a set of speci®c questions which can provide the basis for con-
tinuing research on grammar teaching. These questions are presented in Table 5.
Table 5
A descriptive and interpretive perspective on L2 grammar teaching

These questions are initially descriptive. The interpretive perspective is obtained when
we ask teachers to make explicit the rationale for the practices described through these
questions. (e.g. Why do they sequence grammar activities in a particular way? What
factors in¯uence the way they handle students' errors?).
Content
* How much time do teachers dedicate to grammar teaching?
* What language points do teachers focus on in grammar work? How are these chosen?
Materials
*What are the sources of the grammar materials teachers use?
Lesson Structure
*Do teachers sequence grammar teaching activities in any particular way(s)?
*Within the context of a whole lesson, at what stage(s) does grammar work occur?
Strategies
*To what extent do teachers explain grammar? How?
*Do teachers encourage students to discover things for themselves? How?
*Do teachers encourage students to become aware of grammar rules? How?
*Do teachers promote the use of grammatical terminology in teaching grammar?
*Do teachers provide students with opportunities to use grammar? How?
Outcomes
*Do teachers check if students have understood and `learnt' the grammar under study? How?
Questions About Grammar
*What kinds of questions about grammar do teachers ask the students?
*How do teachers respond to students' answers to these questions?
*Do teachers encourage students to ask questions about grammar?
*How do teachers respond to such questions?
Grammar Errors
*How do teachers deal with students' spoken and written grammatical errors during accuracy
and ¯uency work?
28 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31

In addition, research on teacher cognition provides data which can serve as the
basis of more e€ective teacher education and development initiatives. Currently, L2
teacher educators can, at best, introduce trainees to instructional strategies for
teaching grammar without being able to illustrate how and why (and `if ', I would
add) L2 teachers in real classrooms utilise these strategies. Teacher cognition
research addresses this problem by providing L2 teacher educators with detailed,
authentic accounts of teacher thinking and action in formal instruction. The analysis
and discussion of such accounts can enhance the development of re¯ective skills in
teachers in training (Richert, 1991) and also stimulate practising teachers to evaluate
the bases of their current practices4 (see Borg, 1998b, for a practical example of how
research on teacher cognition in grammer teaching can be used to promote L2 tea-
cher development).
In conclusion, a comment on the evaluation of teacher cognition is also war-
ranted. Given that we lack indisputable knowledge about e€ective L2 grammar
teaching and learning, the evaluation of teacher cognition does not involve deciding
which cognitions are `right' (i.e. which promote learning) and which are `wrong'.
Rather, in my work so far, teachers' cognitions have been evaluated with reference
to several alternative criteria: (1) the clarity of the reasons teachers give for their
instructional decisions; (2) the consistency of teachers' positions (e.g. the congruence
among their cognitions and practices or the internal consistency among cognitions
themselves); (3) teachers' ability to cite evidence (e.g. classroom data, professional
literature) to support their cognitions; (4) teachers' awareness of the factors which
have led to the development of these cognitions; and (5) teachers' willingness to
consider alternatives to the grammar teaching practices and cognitions which they
currently embrace (see Borg, 1999a, for a more detailed discussion). This evaluative
process equates quality teaching with teachers' ability to re¯ect on their practices
and cognitions in formal instruction, to seek concrete support for the ecacy of
these (such support may include evidence of student learning), and to clarify and/or
modify them where they are found to be vague and/or unwarranted. In future, as we
continue to learn more about what teachers do and think in teaching grammar,
studies which investigate students' perspectives on these actions and thoughts will
also be needed. Such work may ultimately shed light on the relationships between
teacher cognition and student learning in L2 grammar teaching.

6. Conclusion

The essence of my argument here is that the study of L2 grammar teaching should
re¯ect the trends evident in mainstream educational research by awarding more
attention to the role of teacher cognition. Teacher cognition research extends our
current understandings of formal instruction by shedding light not only on what

4
The power of these accounts is captured in the reaction of one reader to Borg (1998a) ``although I
myself do not teach grammer, the detailed description of his [the teacher in the study] thoughts/actions did
inspire me to reconsider some of my own teaching practices'' (personal communications).
 S. Borg / System 27 (1999) 19±31 29

teachers do, but also by providing insight into the cognitive bases of these practices.
Such data can play a central role in L2 teacher education and development initia-
tives which stimulate teachers to re¯ect on and hence to improve the quality of their
own grammar teaching practices.

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