Learning to teach the passive: the representation of subject matter knowledge for grammar teaching in pedagogical grammars for EFL/ESL teachers

The article reports on an ongoing study which aims at identifying how the learning and teaching of grammar is conceptualised and represented in ‘pedagogical grammars for EFL/ESL teachers’, viz. those grammar books aimed specifically at trainee and practising teachers of English as a foreign/second language and intended to supply comprehensive and exhaustive information on English grammar, combined with information on the typical problems experienced by EFL/ESL learners in acquiring different grammatical areas, suggestions on suitable teaching activities and practice in error correction and language analysis. Given they are expressly meant as teacher education tools, ‘pedagogical grammars for EFL/ESL teachers’ are arguably an ideal ‘laboratory’ for investigating how theory/research in second language acquisition and language teaching is operationalized for the benefit of the non-academic language teaching professional. The study has singled out seven pedagogical grammars for EFL/ESL teachers, from which the descriptions of the grammatical area of the passive are sampled. The analysis has focused on the information about the acquisition and the teaching of the passive featured in the seven grammars, which has been coded and categorised using (in part) Ellis’ (1997, 1998) framework of methodological options in grammar teaching. The article illustrates the findings of this analysis, highlighting in particular what they reveal about the way theory/research in second language acquisition and language teaching is selected and represented for the EFL/ESL teacher.