Chapter 13 - Conclusion

Summary

The eleven articles in this volume have, I hope, led readers to arrive at fresh insights about grammar and its role in language teaching. It is possible to have higher hopes: One might imagine that this collection marks the start of the royal road to an ideal pedagogy. Such thinking, however, does indeed seem wishful, perhaps just one more illusion about controversies long heard in the history of language teaching. The following quotations, all from authors cited in Kelly's (1969) 25 Centuries of Language Teaching, suggest how much of a “consensus” there has been about grammar:

It is evident that the rules of Grammar can not convey the art of language. … How then is language to be acquired? I answer by adopting the mode by which nature teaches children their mother tongue. N. G. Dufief, 1823

(Kelly 1969: 40)

The idea of those who will have no truck with grammar is the product of a lazy mind which wishes to conceal the fact. And far from being a help to children, it loads them infinitely more than rules, because it deprives them of an aid which would facilitate the understanding of books. P. Nicole, 1670

(Kelly 1969: 219–20)

… for we see most schollers, when they come to the Universities to forget that perfectnesse in their grammars, and most learned men can not say the rules; yet so long as they have full understanding & remembrance to make use in resolving, writing or speaking, this sufficeth. J. Brinsley, 1627

(Kelly 1969: 49)