This chapter discusses different ways that grammar has been viewed, and answers questions such as: Is there always just one grammatical form that’s correct? and How do linguists and lay people think about grammar? The chapter reviews different ways of understanding and investigating grammar learning such as pedagogical grammar, systemic functional linguistics, contrastive analysis, CALF (complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency), language-related episodes, and languaging. The chapter then explores several issues that are specific to grammar learning, such as rule-learning and developmental stages. In particular, it discusses processability theory, teachability theory, and communicative competence. The chapter continues by examining possible answers to the question What’s the best way to teach grammar? The chapter includes the traditional, explicit approach to grammar instruction, and continues with other approaches that are more communicative. Different approaches include proactive and reactive grammar teaching, isolated and integrated form-focused instruction, focused and unfocused tasks, and concept-based instruction.

Chapter 3 surveys different conceptualisations of grammar and what these mean for questions of language education and notions of ‘correct’ or ‘proper’ grammar. Comparisons of descriptive, prescriptive, reference and pedagogical grammar lead to specific questions of what it is that is pedagogical about pedagogical grammar. In order to leverage the idea of using grammatical concepts for pedagogical purposes, we develop the idea of Virtual Grammar. This encompasses abstract linguistic properties that regulate language variation and language acquisition. We outline how this idea can be used as a way to sharpen awareness of linguistic properties in forms that are useful for language education.