Norwegian teacher students’ conceptions of grammar

This paper explores the conceptions of grammar of first-year teacher students (N = 235) in Norway. A conventional content analysis is used to analyse the answers from the first part of a survey exploring the teacher students’ views of grammar through the following questions: Q1. How would you define the term grammar? Q2. Do you think grammar is an important part of Norwegian as a school subject? Q3. Do you feel confident in grammar? The second part of the survey is a grammar knowledge test. The results show that most students define grammar as writing correctly. Many answers also refer to language structure. Among the less frequent definitions are: theoretical knowledge of language structure, precise communication, text, and constituent analysis. Nearly all students report that they consider grammar important. Moreover, most consider their own grammar competence to be relatively good. However, there is a discrepancy between this self-evaluation and the results from the knowledge test, which are quite poor. Our study contributes to the body of research on teacher students’ conception of grammar, which, in a Norwegian context, has been unexplored. We discuss our findings in the light of national and international literature, and we propose plausible contributing factors. We also reflect upon possible consequences for teacher education.