The approaches of traditional grammar, descriptive linguistics, and generative grammar are largely complementary rather than exclusive. Traditional grammar defines eight parts of speech according to meaning or function and concerns itself almost wholely with the written language. Descriptive linguistics postulates that English has a set of unique grammatical patterns and that meaning is conveyed through word form, word order, function words, and intonation patterns; distinguishes between spoken and written language; and recognizes various levels of English usage. Generative grammar attempts to describe all possible English sentences and to give an explanation of how sentences are formed or "generated" by applying both phrase structure and transformational rules. Because certain sentences defy one or more of these approaches, grammar as taught in the schools should be a combination which includes the valid and useful parts of each approach. (JS)