The aim of this study is to investigate the similarities/differences in the views on and practices of grammar teaching of a Swedish teacher of English (FL – Foreign Language) and a UK teacher of English (L1 – First Language). Furthermore, the study tries to explain how the differences found in the comparison can be connected to each country’s different steering documents and to the different teaching conditions involved in teaching English to L1 learners compared to FL learners. The two participating teachers were both interviewed and observed. The results of this study show that the teachers’ grammar practices are very similar since they include explicit formal instruction both inductively and deductively, but with a focus on the latter. These are typical ‘Focus on FormS’ related practices even though both teachers want to achieve a ‘Focus on Form’ directed practice. Furthermore, both teachers use metalanguage in their teaching. The main difference between the teachers’ grammar approaches are the aims that they have with their teaching. The UK teacher aims at plain accuracy in her pupils’ written production whereas the Swedish teacher aims at developing all-round communicative abilities among her pupils. This is explained with the different accuracy-focus which each country’s steering documents hold.

The question of how to teach English grammar has been a pervasive one for a long time, but the topic has scarcely been the subject of contemporary research in a Swedish context. This study aims to gather insights related to the beliefs and pedagogical practises of a small sample of English teachers in the Swedish school system. For example, insights such as whether the teachers indicate a preference towards Inductive or Deductive instruction of grammar and how they tend to approach the teaching of English grammatical patterns. Because of the nature of this goal, this study necessitates the utilization of previous research and frameworks created in the fields of both pedagogy and linguistics, respectively. Without either field, this study could not be conducted, as both fields are vital in understanding the teaching of grammar.  The corpus this study utilized was transcribed from four 18-35 minutes long semi-structured interviews with upper secondary school teachers of English. These interviews were transcribed manually, and they were analysed and categorized using a mix of both the Inductive and Deductive approach of analysing interviews. The results found no overarching preference between Inductive and Deductive grammar teaching among the four teachers, and three out of the four indicated the utilization of both. The teacher who did not indicate this always preferred to teach grammatical structures explicitly. Communication was seen as important by all of the teachers, but only two of the participants indicated the usage of Communicative Language Teaching. The remaining two teachers indicated a preference towards either Task-Based Language Teaching or the Grammar-Translation approach. This variety among the teachers of the study reflected previous research conducted on the topic.