This paper examines the conflict going on within the community of English instructors concerning the value of instruction in traditional grammer and the past and present effect of certain historical processes and of the forces which shaped those processes on the techniques and methodologies of English instruction. The paper discusses the open and widely publicized philosophical struggle which erupted in the 1960s and 1970s between those who consider the teaching of traditional grammar a complete waste of time, those who consider traditional grammar indispensable to the teaching of English composition, and those whose attitudes concerning traditional grammar represent positions between these two viewpoints. The paper argues that, as a result of this conflict, the currently evolving techniques of English instruction have the potential to affect the teaching of developmental English at the community college level. The paper identifies these techniques as: (1) transformational generative grammar and its derived auxiliary, sentence-combining; (2) process orientation with emphasis on composing and cognition (as distinguishable from the traditional focus on product); (3) reactionary measures against certain methodologies labeled traditional grammar, representing a position somewhere between a reluctant acceptance and a mild condemnation of grammar as a tool of composition instruction. (Thirty-one references are attached.) (KEH)