English pedagogical grammaticography for university students in Europe

Despite constantly topping the best seller lists for educational books, English pedagogical grammars have not yet received adequate scholarly attention, particularly those published outside the UK and the USA. This paper aims to shed light on grammars specifically aimed at non-native English speaking students of English language and literature at university level. The genre has developed in continental European countries in the last a hundred years, often taking on ‘local’ features according to country-specific linguistic and educational traditions. Unlike in several other European academic contexts, however, in Italy, pedagogical grammars aimed specifically at university students did not start to be produced until the end of the 20th century, when an overhaul of university research and teaching ‘disciplinary sectors’ led to the creation of ‘English language and translation’ as a self-standing discipline. The paper focuses on a restricted sample of three English pedagogical grammars for university students published in three different countries (Italy, France, Spain) in the last fifteen years. The analysis aims at identifying the structure, the organization and the linguistic and pedagogical rationale of the sample of grammars as well as the metalinguistic options they use to signal ungrammaticality.