What needs to be changed in grammar teaching?

Abstract

This paper analyses the factors that have been complicated complicating the teaching of grammar in pre-university education for years now. We argue against the idea that language is merely a tool that students have to become familiar with and against the notion that linguistic knowledge is the exclusive reserve of experts, while speakers need only concern themselves with using the language. We also explain that grammar teachers, unlike science teachers, do not train the ability to observe, discuss or reflect on grammatical structures. Instead, the many classroom hours devoted to grammar are spent on labelling (often without reflection) parts of speech and syntactic functions.