Bridging the gap between linguistic theory and L1 grammar education – experts’ views on essential linguistic concepts

L1 grammar education is internationally criticised because of its
pedagogy and its curriculum content. There is a gap between
linguistic theory and school grammar in which the latter rarely
makes use of possibly relevant insights from the former. At the
same time, linguistics itself has never seriously undertaken attempts
to identify the fundamental, theory-neutral conceptual knowledge
of the field. Instead, most linguists spend time on defining the
boundaries between different linguistic theories, making it harder
for language teachers to take advantage of insights that linguistics
has to offer. This paper, therefore, aims (1) to establish a theoryneutral foundation for sentential syntax and semantics and (2) to
explore the role this foundation should play in language education
according to linguists. The experts were asked to articulate the most
important linguistic concepts for both the domain of linguistic
theory and the domain of grammar education. Twenty-six concepts
were identified and ranked in a Delphi study for relative importance
in both domains. The importance of the concepts correlated
strongly for both domains, making it feasible to bridge the gap
between linguistics and school grammar. The Dutch context is
taken as a frame of reference, although the study’s relevance is
likely to be broader.