The decline of declension : the role of grammar in modern language textbooks

This study aimed to investigate the role of explicit grammar teaching in modern language textbooks in Swedish schools. One example of a widely used first year textbook for each of the languages English, Spanish, French and German was examined in detail. The primary focus was how grammar is explained and presented and the materials were analysed with respect to use of dedicated grammatical terms, range of grammatical features dealt with and order in which these features are presented. The approaches evident in each of these texts were compared with one another and with the approach evident in a Latin textbook from the late 1800s. The analysis clearly showed the modern courses to be less grammar intensive than the Latin courseValiderat; 20101217 (root