ABSTRACT
Grammar has always been an important feature in the teaching of English as a second or foreign language. There is continual interest in how to introduce grammar to second language (L2) learners and an extensive amount of research in this area (Borg and Burns, 2008). Grammar is ‘… a system of lexicogrammatical patterns that are used to make meaning in appropriate ways’ (Larsen-Freeman, 2014: 258) and the issues involved in making decisions about what and how to teach grammar to learners are varied and complex. Keck and Kim (2014) describe three broad areas of research which applied linguists have investigated: (i) linguistic description (how grammar is used); (ii) second language acquisition (how and when grammar systems are acquired by L2 learners); and (iii) second language instruction (the effectiveness of instructional approaches). In this chapter we focus on the third area and suggest a variety of techniques for introducing learners to grammar in an English for Science course. We illustrate how the learning of grammar can be linked to the use of grammar as a resource in the creation of texts in a discipline-specific context.
