1 Some of these issues have been dealt with in the Introduction, but, very briefly, the main arguments could be summarised thus:

• a Knowing about grammar – knowing what a verb is, what the past tense is – is of limited use unless you know how to put this knowledge to work. Moreover, grammar is just one area of what is called ‘linguistic competence’, other areas being, for example, knowledge of vocabulary and of phonology (and there is a lot of overlap in these areas). Linguistic competence, in turn, is just one of a number of competences that contribute to overall communicative competence, others being discourse competence (knowledge of how texts are put together) and sociolinguistic competence (knowledge of what is appropriate in different contexts). In short, there is a lot more to learning to speak a language proficiently than learning the rules of grammar (and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this).

• Nevertheless, the grammar of a language is highly generative: it is the basis from which it is possible to construct an infinite number of sentences. There are plenty of documented case histories of learners with ‘no grammar’, who rely mainly on vocabulary, and whose ‘interlanguage’ (i.e. their developing language system) has stabilized at a very basic level. Grammatical knowledge (whether explicitly taught or picked up more naturally) is probably therefore a necessary – though not sufficient – condition for language acquisition.

• b Regardless of the approach a teacher decides to adopt towards the teaching of grammar – such as whether to teach rules explicitly, or to set tasks by means of which learners intuit the rules themselves – some understanding of linguistic systems is useful in terms of informing choices about the rules to be taught and the tasks to be set. Moreover, when it comes to making decisions about a learner’s performance, in terms of providing useful feedback on errors, or measuring progress through tests, knowledge of the language systems is essential. It follows that the deeper the understanding on the part of the teacher, the greater the likelihood of making the wisest choices. It does not follow, however, that an exhaustive knowledge of grammar is all that is required in order to teach language effectively.