Bridging the Grammar Gap: teaching English grammar to the iPhone generation1 BAS AARTS, DAN CLAYTON AND SEAN WALLIS

For second language learners, the value of the explicit teaching of English grammar has never been questioned. However, in recent times there has been dissent about whether or not to teach English grammar to native speakers. From the late 1960s onwards English grammar teaching in the United Kingdom largely disappeared from the curriculum, and was replaced by teachers focusing on students learning to express themselves. This was in the main not a bad thing, because it made students active participants in their own learning, and they were expected to think critically and express themselves well. The teaching of grammar, with its emphasis on rules, drilling and learning by rote, was seen as conformist, dull and unnecessary, and this view seemed to be confirmed by research into the effectiveness of grammar teaching. However, the result of this has been the Grammar Gap: very few UK school teachers teaching English today have explicitly been taught grammar, and even if they have been, more often than not it was part of learning a foreign language. The result of this is that grammatical knowledge among school leavers in the UK seems to be on the decline, as a survey of undergraduates’ grammar skills cited in an article by Clayton and Hudson (2010) for the Times Educational Supplement reveals.