Welcome to Grrrammar

Welcome to my new blog, Grrrammar.

(I'm sure I'll regret the name when people can neither spell nor pronounce it, but ... I kind of like it).

As it says at the top, this is aimed at EFL teachers and learners who love grammar (or perhaps even those who hate it and want to soak up some of my enthusiasm).

I'll be honest - I love grammar. Thinking about it, reading about it, talking about it, writing about it. I've done quite a few conference presentations over the years on very simple topics like "What are articles for?", "My top ten grammar structures", and "Timelines and the English tense system". I tend to avoid methodology issues and just stick to the language issues. What always surprises me is how many teachers come to my presentations. I guess they like thinking about grammar too. Or perhaps they come looking for answers.

I don't claim to have all the answers. In fact, very often there are no definitive answers in the world of grammar; sometimes there are only strongly-held opinions.

What I do claim to have, on the other hand, is lots of questions. I'm the sort of person who, when the book says "in this example you can choose between past simple and past perfect - both are correct", wants to know "but why are they both correct? What's the difference? Help me choose."

So that's what I'll do for this blog - I'll raise lots of questions. I'll offer my own answers, on the understanding that my answers aren't necessarily any more valid than yours. I might be wrong, in which case please tell me.

I'm hoping you'll also have lots of questions. Many years ago, I ran a service at the British Council called the Language Doctor, where users from all over the world submitted grammar and learning questions, which I tried to answer. It was exhausting work (and unpaid), but the worst thing was that I'd spend an hour writing an answer that only one person ever saw. With this blog, I'd love to do something similar, but allow the whole world to see (and comment on) my answers.

I'm going to try to be disciplined and publish posts several times a week. I'll do that by keeping my posts very very short. My plan is to split every article into around three bite-sized posts. Hopefully I'll be able to feed any comments from parts 1 and 2 into part 3. That's the idea at least ...