Are you sat down or sitting down while reading this? Have you got or do you have a preference for one form over the other? English has a number of ways of expressing the same concept, and with approximately 400 million mother-tongue speakers and an estimated 1400 million non-native speakers, it’s a diverse, flexible language that continues to adapt, evolve – and provoke strong reactions. You only need to search for #grammar on X to see what we mean!

Developments in the National Curriculum for England have placed grammar in schools at centre stage once more, and divided opinion among politicians, teachers, linguists and journalists, as well as the wider public, on how and whether it should be taught. How have teachers adapted their teaching and learning programmes to the new syllabuses, assessment criteria and tests? What resources are available for students, teachers and the general public to learn more about English grammar, and how reliable are they? What is or should be the role of English grammar teaching in schools today and why is this so controversial? What do teachers, professionals, academics and the general public feel is the cultural and educational significance of knowledge about the language?

Join us at the British Library for a day of talks and discussion, and feel free to ask our panel of experts to explore any aspect of English grammar from ain’t to innit.

Presented by University College London, the British Library and the University of Oxford.

Speakers for 2024 are:

Shahan Choudhury, Anglia Ruskin University

Devyani Sharma, Queen Mary University of London

Jonnie Robinson, British Library

Bas Aarts and Luke Pearce, University College London

Deborah Cameron, University of Oxford

Jennifer Webb, English Teacher and creator of Funky Pedagogy