Need for Increasing Grammar Focus in English Teaching: A Case in Indonesia

The study was aimed at finding out the level of students’ grammatical quality in their use of English in conversations. The subjects were 301 year-2, year-3, and year-4 undergraduate students of the English Study Programs of 36 state and private teacher training universities from 16 of the 34 provinces in Indonesia. The study was descriptive qualitative of the observation-type research method for the data-collection technique using an open-ended observation guide as the research instrument. Data were sorted into categories, counted, and ranked by frequencies of occurrences. Research results showed that, regardless of their years, students had a low level of grammatical quality in their language use. In a rank, their grammatical problems were related to verb group, finite verbs, subject-verb concords, predicates, concords of nouns, word choices, and others. Suggestions were proposed that the teaching of English as a foreign language should bring back grammar into its appropriate place. Compared to first and second language teaching, a rough ratio of 20 by 80 percent between fluency and accuracy would be acceptable. DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2015.v5n3p13