The article by Richard Hudson and John Walmsley discusses grammar in the 20th century. The authors try to determine what caused the decline of grammar. They conclude that one of the factors in the demise of teaching grammar in schools was the lack of research on English grammar. The article claims that for several decades up to about 2000, most state schools in England taught little or no grammar, and it is still normal for students to know virtually nothing about grammar upon leaving school.
The authors believe that grammar children should learn grammar for several reason. To expand their grammatical compentence, to underpin this competence in performance, to support foreign-language learning, to develop their thinking skills, to develop their investigation skills, and to develop a critical response to some of the ways in which language is used in their everyday environment.
In recent efforts, grammar awareness has gained momentum. Governments have recongnized the problem with grammar and tried to counter-attack it in their best way. The government in England has implemented new regulations for teachers, in-service training. In-service training has been more realistic at least in the sense that it recognises the extent of the problem. A man by the name of Carter led a large scale project called Language in the National Curriculum.Its main achievement was probably to establish, in the teaching community, the general principle that explicit knowledge about language, including grammar, is in fact relevant and important for English teaching.
