Who rules the rules?

Abstract

How pupils are to learn a second or a foreign language, especially grammatical elements, has been much debated the last couple of decades. This study is a qualitative analysis of teaching materials published between 1966 and 2007, used when teaching English in Swedish schools. The focus is on grammar exercises and the grammatical element relative pronouns. The exercises devoted to relative pronouns are analysed and contrasted in connection with the steering documents published in the early sixties (Lgr -60), the early eighties (Lgr -80) and the ones used today (Lpo -94). Results in short show that the exercises look roughly the same with introductory example sentences and so called fill-in-the-gaps exercises. The teaching materials, except one, use an inductive approach to grammar and the closer we get to the new millennium the more contrastive the exercises and explanations get.