The construction of grammatical knowledge by students of primary and secondary education: some approaches to the learning of the verb

Abstract

The verb is one of the categories that a school grammar must necessarily face, not only in terms of the knowledge of the concept and the relationship with other categories, but also in terms of the role it plays in writing. In this paper we present three studies that describe the construction of grammatical knowledge by students of primary and secondary education when they learn contents related to the verb: the present tense, the verbal mood, and verbal complementation. Results from the three studies show how learners develop strategies and what obstacles they have to face in order to develop grammatical reasoning. They also show the value of interaction (on peers or with the teacher and writing) to promote the development of metalinguistic activity at school in order to connect grammar rules and language use.