A multimodal interactional analysis of everyday English grammar teaching practices in five Danish gymnasium classrooms

This PhD thesis investigates everyday English grammar teaching practices as these are multimodally and interactionally constructed in five Danish gymnasium classrooms. In addition, it enquires into how these teaching practices relate to research-based recommendations and policy prescriptions. A primary goal of the thesis is thus to provide new (contextual) knowledge about how English grammar teaching is actually accomplished in practice. That knowledge is then applied to meet the second goal of the thesis: to employ the analytical findings as a practice platform from which to relate critically to existing research on L2 grammar instruction as well as  to the ministerial guidelines that English teachers in the Danish gymnasium work from. On the basis of this double research interest, the central argument in this thesis is that orienting towards socially situated, interactively and multimodally constructed grammar teaching practices is a relevant and necessary supplement to L2 grammar instruction research. Furthermore, the dissertation finds that the ministerial guidelines are not in any clear or thorough way related to research when it comes to grammar which is otherwise listed as a core subject of English in the texts. The guidelines are very uncommunicative with regard to grammar and grammar teaching.
The dissertation problematises this and eventually provides suggestions as to what could beneficially be elaborated upon.