ABSTRACT
Recently, however, policy has taken a new turn in the Dutch mother-tongue curriculum. In reaction to public criticism concerning poor writing skills of students in secondary and higher education, a review committee had to make proposals for the Ministry of Education for a “continuous” curriculum from elementary till the end of secondary education with a strong focus on grammar and spelling (Expertgroep Doorlopende Leerlijnen, 2008). Although the committee did its best to also include other parts of mother-tongue learning (such as reading, writing and oral skills) in the proposal, the typical policy-maker’s reflex of “back to basics” is well demonstrated: when poor writing is the symptom, devote more attention to grammar and spelling. This indicates that the real problems underlying poor writing are not well understood, but it also provides an opportunity to rethink the pros and cons of linguistic reflection in the classroom and why and when the teaching of explicit grammatical concepts makes sense. This is important in the Dutch situation as in other countries. At least, it is much more important than one would suspect on the basis of the few studies on the basis for grammar teaching in the mother-tongue (L1) curriculum that have been carried out in the last 30 years.
