In a personal letter, Chomsky suggests that while the study of grammar has little detectable effect on writing ability, it can, as a branch of science, help students learn how (and why) to think about hard and intriguing questions and to develop natural curiosity. (HOD)

An examination of the history of the practical grammar, of which the college handbook is the modern reflex, reveals why the grammar handbook is so stubbornly resistant to changes in linguistic theory, usage, or ideology. First, codifying English grammar and producing texts for teaching English grammar to school children during the eighteenth…

As an emotional topic, concern with acceptable usage of language has never been far from the public consciousness, but the public's willingness to abide by educators' views on the necessity of teaching usage rules has varied over the years. The situation we face is not a new one--the eighteenth century saw the initial widespread concern with…

In the last 20 years, research on language has gone from an area that specialists in composition and rhetoric took quite seriously to one that specialists now pay little attention to. This shift can be accounted for because (1) some teachers appear to have given up on using any insights from linguistic analysis in their teaching of composition;…

In tracing the development of language curriculum in public schools, one discovers that prior to the twentieth century grammar was the center of linguistic attention. Around the beginning of the century, psychologists and others were doing research on the supposed efficacious results of such study and were finding that such supposed results were…

Offers a review of various veins of thought related to writing instruction such as traditional grammar and rhetoric, discourse processes and cognitive science, and discourse form and sociolinguistics. (SRT)

During the first half-century of the existence of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the teaching of grammar aroused furious debate among its members. In 1924, Charles C. Fries assembled a panel of six language scholars to answer three questions: (1) What should English teachers know about the English language? (2) Do the usual…