Abuses of grammar teaching: the role of crisis discourse in appropriating a potentially innovative language syllabus for Singapore schools

Abstract

In 1999 the issue of grammar and its teaching re‐emerged in Singapore as a topic of great intensity in a government‐managed media debate. As studies in other educational contexts have shown, debates about grammar in political discussions and in the media typically proceed in terms of a discourse of crisis and falling standards. More specifically, in Singapore this anxiety over language and correctness has repeatedly served to take attention away from a concern with how literacy is effectively taught. My particular interest is in the ways in which this discourse of crisis fuelled by the media, and the nationwide in‐service English grammar course which was offered in its wake as a quick‐fix solution, impacted on the English Language Syllabus that was introduced at the same time. I undertake a critical reading of the English grammar course materials for teachers, their assumptions about grammar and what grammar teaching is for, and how they could seriously interfere with, and co‐opt, a potentially innovative syllabus which foregrounds generic competency and grammar as a social meaning‐making resource.