Introduction

Perhaps one of the questions most often raised by language teaching professionals is whether students should be taught grammar and if it really helps. It would be most welcome if there were a definite yes or no answer. If it were demonstrated that grammatical instruction does not help in any circumstances, we need not bother about it and could then turn to other ways of teaching methodology. If it could be shown conclusively to help, then we would need to know in what circumstances and how to go about it. Unfortunately, the question is not nearly so simple. The best answer we can currently offer is that it helps for certain learners at certain levels with certain aspects of grammar. If this is the case, the question is worth pursuing, and the research agenda is to spell out each of these conditions.

This paper focuses on the question of which aspects of grammar call for instruction and why. We investigate the role of grammatical consciousness-raising (C-R), a cognitive approach to grammatical instruction developed by Sharwood Smith (1981) and Rutherford (1987). The results of a classroom study on second language learners’ acquisition of “ergative” verbs in English suggest that this approach is viable. We shall argue that in light of both empirical results and learnability considerations, certain areas of grammar call for some form of grammatical instruction, to which C-R can be an effective approach.

For and against grammatical instruction

Grammar instruction in general has been in and out of language methodologies following the pendulum swing from grammar-driven audiolingual methods to communicative approaches which consider grammar as something peripheral.