School of Education, Culture and Communication Teaching Grammar in efl classrooms in Swedish Upper-Secondary School

5 Conclusion
To sum up, the concrete results of the two approaches did not differ to any great extent in the present study (Figure 6). However, if Ellis’s predictions on the additional positive effects of teaching according to the GCR approach are true, the overall results for teaching according to the GCR approach are actually greater than by teaching according to the PPP approach, in this study at least. Whatever Krashen (1982; cf. 2.2.1) may believe about the pointlessness of explicitly teaching grammar, this study has shown that it may not be the grammar teaching in itself that is the problem. It may be, as Rod Ellis (2002) wrote, that the problem lies in unchallenged and outdated views on teaching grammar (cf. 2.4). During the course of this study, the findings compiled and the many references used have not provided any conclusive evidence that would confirm one approach to be superior to another, and further research regarding the many different approaches to teaching grammar would be beneficial to the fields of both second and foreign language learning and teaching. It does, however, seem to be confirmed by this study, as in much research before this (cf. 2.3 and 4.4), that girls overall achieve higher levels of competence in a foreign language with the help of formal instruction. In the present study, the learning of a particular grammatical problem was at stake, and the results showed that girls had an easier time using that feature correctly afterwards. However, the aspects which trigger this difference between the genders are not discussed in this study. Suggestions for further research include following a group of learners and using different approaches to teaching grammar in connection with different grammatical structures which
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are similar to each other. This way, all the informants are the same for all the testing, making it easier to compare one approach to another without having to take into account the variation of informants in different groups.

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