The conceptual importance of grammar

Abstract Knowledge about Language (KaL) is an important part of L1 language education around the world. A controversial KaL grammatical or syntactic knowledge, i.e., knowledge form, meaning and use sentences phrases. In current international discourse on grammar teaching, principally motivated by desire to enhance students’ literacy development, befitting communicative turn in mother tongue following high quality research which has shown that contextualized teaching can impact writing development. However, there are also other potentially meaningful reasons teach grammar, remain underresearched underdiscussed curriculum discussions: (1) general importance justifies speakers understand how their works; (2) provides more insight into workings human mind; (3) be used facilitate reasoning stimulate critical thinking abilities. These for do not necessarily relate development; rather, they pertain a conceptual grammar. This paper explores these arguments argues, partly based empirical evidence from recent research, knowledge-related rationales deserve prominent place discussions teaching.