After having dealt with the role or importance within the process of L1 and FL leaning, it is time to move onto the third and last section of the topic which will be devoted to the evolution of grammar from prescriptive grammars to modern ones.
As it has been pointed out in the previous section, for an effective learning of any FL grammar, balanced plan of classroom teaching/learning procedures through which knowledge is presented gradually and systematically is required. For this reason and because this subject, like no other in the field of language study, has been affected by generational change; different teaching approaches has been developed and employed throughout history.
For instance, if we had gone to school before the 60s, we would have been taught about the English language using traditional grammar, an approach which would have provided us with a set of techniques for analysing sentences and which would have instilled our minds a firm set of options about correct and incorrect usage. On the contrary, if we had gone to school between the 60s and 90s, we would have been taught little or no grammar at all; and, if we had gone to
All grammars parse sentences. It is an essential first step. But if the study of grammar stops there, the result is an approach to language study that many people recall with distaste. As a consequence, it was common to find children learning analyses and definitions off by heart, without any real understanding of what was going on. Little attempt was made to demonstrate the usefulness of grammatical analysis and there was no interest in relating this analysis to the broader principles of grammatical patterning in the language as a whole. Consequently, people were taught parsing ended up unable to see the point of the exercise and left remembering grammar only as a dead irrelevant