The role of explicit grammar instruction in German as a foreign language : A contrastive schoolbook analysis for beginners in the Swedish upper secondary school

This study is about the role explicit grammar teaching plays in Swedish schoolbooks for beginners in German as a foreign language. The study is a qualitative content analysis of three schoolbooks (published in 1982, in 1995 and in 2016) for step 1 German as a foreign language in the Swedish upper secondary school. It is analysed how grammar is explained respectively practised, and a comparison between the schoolbooks is carried out. Further are the explanation of the grammar and the exercises regarding language-learning methods analysed, based on theories of language learning: the grammar-translation method, audio-lingual and audiovisual methods, the direct method, cognitivist learning theory, constructivist learning theory and communicative language teaching. The result of the study is that there are differences as well as similarities between the schoolbooks, regarding the explanations and the exercises, as well as the language learning methods