Grammatical thinking and understanding of grammar

Language awareness and grammar have traditionally been one of the pivotal fields in mother tongue (L1) education in Finnish primary and secondary schools. In spite of a long history in this line of Finnish mother tongue education, teachers consider grammar as one of the most challenging contents. In spite of the fact that students are usually unmotivated in learning grammar, knowledge of grammar and grammatical concepts is known to be highly relevant for the development of students’ own language use, and for the development of their linguistic identity and metalinguistic knowledge. In this project we examine new ideas on how the pedagogy of grammar teaching could be improved and designed as more motivating.