Becoming a DDL teacher in English grammar classes: A pilot study

Abstract

This study explores the process of becoming a data-driven learning (DDL) teacher in EFL grammar classes. An in-service teacher wholly new to the DDL approach joined and received training in it over four months. He first studied what DDL was and how it was used in language settings, going on to teach grammar to two undergraduate classes, one with DDL and the other with Grammar Translation, for comparison purposes. His overall experience of learning and teaching with these two approaches was recorded in self-reflective journals and later in interviews with the present writer. The perceptions by the two classes of the treatment they received were also surveyed to reflect the teacher’s performance. The results as a whole show that the course of becoming a DDL teacher is a complex, radical and continuous series of transformations, generating new evidence in support of DDL practice.