Absence of evidence is not, as the saying goes, the same thing as evidence of absence. But if you continue looking for something intensively and keep failing to find it, you can be forgiven for starting to worry. And so it is with grammar teaching in schools and its link with the improved writing ability. One study among many others, in this case, found that teaching kids how to label the hits and pieces in a sentence does not make them better writers. It was novel in that it tested six- and seven-year-olds who used a digital platform called Englicious to take grammar lessons alongside the rote classroom teaching of grammatical details and their functions. The Englicious group did no better than those receiving ordinary instruction when it came to writing narrative passages.

Bath Aarts, one of the researchers on the project and one of the scholars behind Englicious holds out hope that with longer exposure, or a study of older students, an improvement in writing skills might be detected.

Other observers may begin to wonder whether the National Curriculum in England, which since 2014 has made grammar such a central part of its English program might have gone down a blind alley.

In retrospect, the grammatical knowledge of modal verbs such as “can”, “should” and “may” does little to help students use them effectively in their own writing. These words are anyway grasped by tiny children without the need to know what they are called. This may tempt the conclusion that the teaching of grammar should be shelved altogether. But there are reasons to reform it rather than scrap it.

One of practical reasons to ask children to work on grammar is that explicit knowledge of it will make learning a foreign language easier. Even if you did intuit how to make noun clauses in your native languages as a very young kid just without instruction, grasping them in German or Russian in later years is simpler if you know how to define and spot them. In fact, many English speakers come to understand grammar by studying a foreign language rather than the other way around.

These days, young people in some English-speaking countries are speaking a strange language, especially when communicating on social media.

Look at these words chosen by The Washington Post: “David Bowie dying is totes tradge” and “When Cookie hugged Jamal it made me totes emosh.” Or this sentence: “BAE. let me know if you stay in tonight.”

What on earth do they mean? Well, “totes” is a short form of “total if Similarly,” “tradge” mean: “tragic” and “emosh” means “emotional”. It seems that, for millennials, typing in this form is no only time-saving but fashionable.

As you can see, many millennial slangs are formed by so-called “totesing”— the systematic abbreviation of words. The trend might have started with “totally” becoming “totes”. but it now has spread to many other English words.

The origins of other millennial slangs are more complex than “totesing”. “Bae”, for example, has been widely used by African-Americans for years. It can be an expression of closeness with one's romantic partner or, like “sweetheart”, for someone without romantic connection. After pop singer Pharrell used the word in his work, “bae” became mainstream.

Some people might think millennial slangs lower the value of the English language, but Melboume University linguist Rosey Billington doesn't agree. She says when people are able to use a language in a creative way, they show that they know the language rules well enough to use words differently. Two other linguists, Lauren Spradlin and Taylor Jones, share the sane view. The two analysed hundreds of examples of totes-speak and discovered totesing has complex roots. It isn't simply an adult version of baby talk, nor a clever way to minimize your word count. Rather, it is a highly organized system that relies on a speaker's mastery of English pronunciation. It is about sounds, follows sound system of English and has strict rules.

When you throw cats and dogs in a scene where they are falling from the sky, it might be hard for an English learner to know exactly what it means. So English learners should know the meaning of English idioms (习语).

It’s important to not only teach the meaning of idioms, but also teach how to use them correctly and effectively (有效地). When a non-native speaker uses an idiom correctly, he or she will sound very fluent. But on the other hand, if they use the phrase wrongly, they will sound the exact opposite.

Learning idioms is appropriate for intermediate to advanced (中到高级的) students. If you teach an idiom lesson to beginners or low-intermediate learners, they are very likely to use it wrongly. So how should teachers teach English idioms correctly?

Provide idioms in context, so students can fully understand the meaning. Be sure to provide a conversation around it as an example.

Watching videos of native speakers talking is a great way to show your students how idioms are used in the real world. FluentU is a great resource that can help you highlight the usage and context of various idioms used. FluentU takes real-world videos — like music videos, news and inspiring (鼓舞人心的) talks — and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

Teach idioms in spoken form, not written, and explain to students how they are conversational, rather than formal. Have students practice the idioms in dialogue to help them understand how they’re used in spoken English.

Don’t just hand out a long list of idioms. Be sure to provide a small selection of 5-10 idioms and explain each one. If you provide too many examples, it’ll simply turn into an introduction of what an idiom is, rather than how to actually remember the meaning and use one effectively in dialogue.