Grammar: How not to be Part of the Problem

Abstract

Correct grammar. In the eyes of many students studying foreign languages as well as a large constituent of laypeople like parents and even many in the educational bureaucracy such as principals and government administrators, that is the goal, and even the sum total, of studying another language. Scholars in the field of language acquisition on the other hand know that grammar is only a small part of language competence. The classic description of language competence comes from Canale and Swain (1980). In their formation, grammatical competence is only one out of four aspects, the other three being discourse, sociolinguistic, and strategic competencies. The other classic rubric of communicative competence was presented by Lyle Bachman (1990) who divided it into two major categories of organizational and pragmatic competence and subcategories of grammatical, textual, illocutionary, and sociolinguistic competence. So, contrary to lay opinion, there is much more to language competence than grammatical accuracy.