Grammar
Grammar is the way in which words come together to form sentences or the way in which words are formed for different uses.
It is difficult to define this word accurately because people use it in different ways. Some definitions include:
- the branch of linguistics which deals with syntax and morphology and sometimes semantics
- the study of word classes, their inflections and relations in a sentence
- the rules which we combine words
In the TEFL World Wiki, a most useful resource is the Grammar Guide which covers a lot of the terms you will need to teach or learn English.
Prescriptive or Descriptive
There has been much debate on this point. Essentially a prescriptive grammar tells people what to say. For example, old-fashioned grammars used to say one must never split an infinitive. The problem here is that millions of people split infinitives everyday in their speech so if the majority of people do it, can it be wrong?
Another problem with prescriptive grammars is that they look at language as a fixed entity. They assume that language does not change. However, language does change and new ways of speaking come into fashion.
More recently, we have what are called descriptive grammars. These don't tell people what to say, they simply describe how people speak.
