Icelandic teachers’ and students’ attitudes towards grammar

Sammendrag

There has been a long-standing debate in Iceland on how the teaching of Icelandic language and its grammar should be approached; how it should be taught, what should be included in it and whether or not grammar should be taught as a separate entity. This article aims to provide additional scientific foundation for this discussion by shedding light on teachers’ and students’ views of these matters. The data used comes from a larger research project on the current standing of Icelandic in Icelandic compulsory and upper secondary schools and consists of interviews with a total of 56 students and 19 teachers of Icelandic in 9 compulsory and 5 upper secondary schools in three different parts of Iceland. The results are characterised by contrasts and conflicts as there seems to be little consensus amongst both teachers and students about what grammar consists of or how it links to other aspects of Icelandic as a school subject, and both groups harbour serious doubts about its general usefulness, even though they appear to agree that it is a good tool for determining what is right and what is wrong in language. These results are a cause for concern, and they call for introspection and reflection amongst teachers of Icelandic in order to establish a clearer consensus on how grammar should be approached in schools. At the same time, the results add further nuance to the ongoing research on the application of and attitudes towards grammar in European and Nordic school contexts.