Grammar In Language Teaching And Learning

Traditionally, grammar has been considered a central aspect of both language teaching and learning. Indeed, until not too many years ago, success in the study of the English language was synonymous of mastery the grammatical rules of the language. Yet, this particular view began to change with the emergence of some other fields of linguistics which give now importance to other relevant extralinguistic factors such as intention or context. But, what is grammar? how important is it within the process of language teaching/learning? How has it changed over the years? Answering this questions is the main aim of this topic. For this purpose, I will divide my topic into three main sections: firstly, I will provide a definition for the concept of

In fact, it has been the focus of scholarly attention over the past fifty years, resulting in a remarkable range of differing approaches. But what grammar really is? The concept of grammar emerges from the major concern of early Greek and Roman scholarship on thought about language. Indeed, the term grammar comes from the Greek word grammatike, meaning "to write" or the expression grammatike techne, meaning "the art of writing". Yet, before providing a current definition for the term, it worth noting that the term can be understood in different ways in everyday use. First, grammar may be understood as "something that can be good or bad, correct or incorrect", or in other words, as a whole set of rules which tells people what they must do or not. In this sense, grammar is frequently understood as "the art of speaking and writing a language correctly. Secondly, grammar as "a book on grammar". In this sense, the grammar of a language is no more than the grammar as presented by the author of a particular book. Finally, grammar "as the science of describing how language is used"; in other words, grammar used in the technical sense and at the level of analysis in linguistic structure dealing with the organisation of words into

The simplification of grammar for classroom use contrasted sharply with the complex studies that scholars of linguistics were conducting about languages. During the 19th and early 20th centuries the historical point of view flourished. Scholars who realized that every living language was in a constant state of flux studied all types of written records of modern European languages to determine the courses of their evolution. They did not limit their inquiry to literary languages but included dialects and contemporary spoken languages as well. As a result of the work of historical grammarians, scholars came to see that the study of language can be either diachronic (its development through time) or synchronic (its state at a particular time). The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and other descriptive linguists began studying the spoken language. They collected a large sample of sentences produced by native speakers of a language and classified their material starting with phonology and working their way to