How Should the Teaching of Grammar Be Conceptualized in the Education of Multilingual Learners?

This paper analyses the role of formal grammar teaching in the education of multilingual learners from migrant backgrounds. It is argued that an instructional focus on grammar teaching, conceptualized as one component of language awareness, will be most effective when it is pursued in the teaching of academic subjects across the curriculum and also integrated with a broader focus on promoting active literacy engagement. School language policies focused on developing language awareness and promoting literacy engagement should minimally include six sets of instructional strategies that respond to opportunity gaps experienced by multilingual students. These instructional responses include scaffold comprehension and production of language, reinforce academic language across the curriculum, engage students’ multilingual repertoires, maximize literacy engagement, connect with students’ lives, and affirm students’ identities. The ways in which the teaching of grammar relates to these instructional strategies in the development of school-based language policies are discussed.