English Grammar Rules
There was a time, way back in the murky past, when understanding English Grammar was considered to be one of the fundamentals taught at schools in the English speaking world. For some reason, this has changed over the past few decades and a more holistic approach to literacy instruction has been advocated. However, even highly intelligent students now seem to struggle when it comes to the conventions of writing in English. Clearly, there are some things that just don’t automatically happen via exposure to language and texts. There are still some basic elements of language learning, including those pesky Grammar rules, which must be actively taught.
In fact, it is somewhat misleading to refer to English Grammar rules as ‘rules’. They are not rules in the same way that we have rules of cricket, for instance. If we wanted to know about the rules of cricket, we would simply consult the official Cricket Rule Book. However, we cannot do something similar if we want to know about English Grammar rules. There is no official English Grammar Guide that contains all the laws of the language. These rules are not so much ‘rules’ as they are ‘conventions’, agreed upon quite informally over time by the majority of those who use the language.
