On 30 April, the Abacus (from the excerpt of Don John of Austria) library of Valencia held the launch of the book “El verbo y su enseñanza” (Octaedro), coordinated by Anna Camps and Teresa Ribas (GREAL).

The event was attended by all the Valencian authors taking part in it: Felipe Zayas, Carmen Rodríguez (from GIEL Group) and Manuel Pérez Saldanya. The book is directed to active and trainee teachers with the aim of making known the research focused on teaching and learning of grammar and reflecting on its relevance in the linguistic education of the Primary and Secondary School stage. The book’s focus is the verb, given the complexity of its learning and teaching. This is reflected in a set of articles focusing on theory, but also on classroom practice. As indicated by the coordinators in the introduction, the aim is to “contribute to the improvement of the linguistic formation of pupils by providing tools that allow the teachers and those responsible of the education policies to reflect and dialogue.”

The launch was coordinated by professor Rodríguez, who presented the member of the board and thereupon gave the floor to María Josep Cuenca, full university professor of the University of Valencia, specialist in syntax and applied linguistics and book reviewer. Cuenca emphasised the unity of the ensemble since, despite its choral nature, the research on the teaching and learning of grammar is perfectly intertwined in order to rethink its place in education. This idea reflected in the “perfect unity of the work, in the tone, the approach, or the principles that sustain it, as well as the coherence that emanates from the point of view of classroom application”. Cuenca complimented the presented work and pointed out the need of this type of works “since the book shows how through the verb, organiser of the sentence, it can deepen in grammar teaching between the traditional and the Anglo-Saxon model.

Its structure is divided in four parts, the first one Enseñar gramática: el verbo  (Teaching grammar: the verb) is the most theoretical and it includes a space for reflection on grammar teaching and learning by Camps, which connects perfectly with the last part of the book, dedicated to thinking about practice, but without repeating concepts.  The second part of the book ¿Qué nos enseñan las investigaciones? (What does the research teach us?) focuses on the values of the present in Primary School pupils, the Secondary School pupils’ concepts of the subjunctive, or the grammar knowledge and expressive command of past tenses, as well as the verb classification to work the verbal complementation. The third part of the book ¿Qué nos enseña la experiencia del aula? (What does the classroom experience teach us?) includes classroom research on how to introduce grammar in Primary School, the use of verbs in narrative in first and foreign languages, or the change of discourse from direct to indirect. This chapter also leaves space for argumentation of future teachers in the face of erroneous children’s verbal productions. The last block of the book, titled Recapitulamos pensando en la práctica (We recapitulate with practice in mind), goes over a grammar teaching model and concludes with an extensive commented bibliography.

Zayas highlighted the need of elaborating from the classroom’s point of view a pedagogical grammar, based on theoretical knowledge, but always in the service of the purpose of education, or as the author points out: “focusing on the development of competent language users in a literate culture. It is thus necessary a pedagogical grammar that helps pupils build grammatical concepts from the observation of the functioning of linguistic forms in discourse; and that also helps to link those concepts with the teaching of verbal usages.”

With the desire to contribute to the development of a pedagogical grammar, the floor was given to Camps, who closed the event and explained how the idea for this book came about. To this end, Camps referred to the origin of the research projects and the need to bring this to light to this field in order to conclude with the idea that the book has the “intention to fill the void in the reflection and teaching of grammar, as well as to overcome the distance between university theory and the teaching world to bring closer didactics research to the world of education as an applicable and efficient tool.” Therefore, the relation between grammatical knowledge and discourse practices is very present in the whole ensemble, from the articles that focus on the construction of grammatical concepts and their uses, like those that reflect on the classroom’s work.

The book was also presented on 6 April in the Humanity’s Library of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

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