The Great Grammar Debate A study of grammar's place in the classroom

Introduction

Grammar is often defined simply as how words and their chemical element parts combine to form sentences (Oxford 2001). Unfortunately, the definition of grammar and the reality of its worldly concern in our style are neither simple nor soft definable. Linguists have for years fought over whether the rules of language are resolute or dynamic, and educational theorists have toiled in a pair mêlée over how it should be taught (if it is in time to be taught at all). This paper will attempt to take through some of that noise and see if any consciousness can be made of the sense of language, as sanitary as pose a recommendation as to where it should lodge in the pedagogy of our school systems.

A Little History

Linguists can loosely be divided into two groups: prescriptivists, or those who hold that language is set in stone by fixed rules, and descriptivists, or those who believe that language is a dynamic entity that evolves from the cracks and patterns of actual practice (Cameron 1995). There was a time, not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far away, when the prescriptivists were the superficial monarchy of the grammar kingdom in the United States; a time when everyone seemed reasonably clear about what should be taught and in what tack (Nunberg 1983).



Verbs in all their complexity dominated the scene, and conjugations and inflections were learned by iterate everything until you threw up. The result was that while many grammarians-to-be understood a honorable deal about how English was constructed, many also name writing to be a tiresome and confusing assist that did little more than tease the boundaries of sanity (Finegan 1980).

All kidding aside, such a process, which requires a mastery of the rules before advancing to content, takes a striking deal of...

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