Grammar Syllabus

Abstract

The use of a grammar (or ‘structural’) syllabus to organize language teaching has long been a mainstay of the teaching profession and there exists a well-established ‘canon’ of grammatical content found in English language teaching coursebooks and practice grammars. Implicit in any grammar syllabus are decisions on both content (i.e., which grammar points have been selected for inclusion) and sequencing (i.e., in which order it has been decided to teach them and at which level). A number of principles can be employed in order to make informed decisions on this but some reject the use of grammar syllabuses outright as being incompatible with evidence on language acquisition. Recent research using data from learner corpora on learner developmental sequences has the potential to bring new insights to the design of grammar syllabuses.