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Abstract
In 1999 the issue of grammar and its teaching re-emerged in Singapore as a topic of great intensity in a government-managed media debate. As studies in other educational contexts have shown, debates about grammar in political discussions and in the media typically proceed in terms of a discourse of crisis and falling standards. More specifically, in Singapore this anxiety over language and correctness has repeatedly served to take attention away from a concern with how literacy is effectively taught. My particular interest is in the ways in which this discourse of crisis fuelled by the media, and the nationwide in-service English grammar course which was offered in its wake as a quick-fix solution, impacted on the English Language Syllabus that was introduced at the same time. I undertake a critical reading of the English grammar course materials for teachers, their assumptions about grammar and what grammar teaching is for, and how they could seriously interfere with, and co-opt, a potentially innovative syllabus which foregrounds generic competency and grammar as a social meaning-making resource.