ساسان بالغی زاده

This paper explores male and female students' and teachers' perceptions of the role of grammar instruction and corrective feedback. A questionnaire, administered to 60 male and female intermediate EFL students (30 males and 30 females) and 40 teachers (20 males and 20 females), elicited student and teacher perceptions concerning the role of explicit grammar instruction and corrective feedback in learning English as a foreign language. Data comparisons revealed high agreement between students as a group and teachers as a group across genders on the majority of questions. A number of discrepancies were evident between students and teachers’ beliefs within each gender. There were also some comparisons of sample groups based on gender differences which examined the effect of formal grammar instruction in foreign language teaching. Although the differences between students' and teachers’ belief system can be a threat to learning, it is essential to mention that teachers’ consideration of students’ perceptions of those factors will improve the process of new language learning, and an effort to consider the potential mismatch between students’ beliefs and teachers’ instructions will enhance learning.

This paper examines the role of the structural syllabus in EFL settings, particularly EFL classes in Iran. The paper starts with an overview of what the structural syllabus is. Afterwards, the shortcom-ings of the structural syllabus are reviewed. Next the role of formal grammar instruction is discussed in depth. Finally it is suggested that because of the crucial role that grammar instruction plays in EFL set-tings, the structural syllabus can serve these classes better than other syllabus types. The structural syl-labus advocated in this paper has two qualities. First, it is compatible with learners’ internal syllabus. Second, it benefits from innovative tasks such as consciousness-raising activities and communicative ac-tivities.