Grammar, standard Australian English and the Australian curriculum : English : what could principled implementation look like in years 7-10?

An analytical knowledge of grammar should not be considered as a panacea for improving student writing. Grammar needs to be seen as part of a much larger set of rhetorical practices - some of which are at root 'literary' - that focus attention on effects and effectiveness in writing in particular. Seeing grammatical knowledge in isolation as a panacea easily becomes a return to the days of fill-in-the blanks grammar exercises that so clearly failed in improving student writing. That much is certainly clear from the history of systematic reviews into the link between work on grammar and writing development. Many textbook writers are more than willing to supply the fill-in-the-blanks-exercises market, but our students deserve better. Similarly, the focus on SAE will, as it always has, continue a delicate balancing act for some teachers between facilitating access while respecting - and creating a space for - diversity and difference, and for English as identity work (see Doecke and McClenaghan, this volume). Taking the opportunity to treat SAE itself as something with a (continuing) history and thus, subject to problematising and contestation can foreground some of these issues for students themselves and might assist in this balancing act.