Preliminaries:It’s all too familiar for teachers of English to confront the challenge of a commercially motivated idea of a crash course of English promising the acquisition of the foreign language in just “three months of easy learning”. Some “innovators” even go so far as to promise teaching English “without grammar”. There is an English discourse game that complicates things: everyone working in conformity with the demands of the English discourse who happens to be writing about the problems facing teachers of English considers it a proper (commeilfaut) and cutting edge approach to give a good bashing to “grammar grouches and sticklers”. The one who was brought up to teach English along these lines will easily pick holes in the Soviet textbook that has been one of the most successful projects since the midst of the XXth  century.

The aim of the article is to emphasize the importance of the Stickler’s approach to teaching English grammar in Ukrainian cultural settings that requires to combine rigorous learning of ‘rules’ with practicing ‘natural usage’ that is so important to ‘fluent English’.

The urgency of the research is to be seen against the unabated debate about the shortcut to the acquisition of ‘fluent English’: too many people buy into the tempting idea of learning English “without grammar”. Deplorably, this erroneous stance is backed up by the war against the sticklers waged in the academese of the English discourse.

The object under consideration: the textbook of English grammar by Kachalova.

Key terms: sticklers, rules, typical mistakes, natural usage, fluent English, academese, English discourse.

Theoretical background: can be summed up in the following statement made in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language: “The structural properties of the language are many and complex, but at least they are finite and easy to identify: there are only so many sounds, letters, and grammatical constructions, and although there is a huge vocabulary, at least the units are determinate and manageable. None of this applies when we begin to investigate the way English is used: we are faced immediately with a bewildering array of situations, in which the features of spoken or written language appear in an apparently unlimited number of combinations and variations”
[7, c. 286].

Methods and organization of research: putting Kachalova’s rules against the background of practical English usage.

The results of research can be summed up in the following points:

1. The English academese follows bad habits of other national metalanguages (Russian, German, French etc.) which is particularly visible in its relish of professional jargon [2]. Still, there is no other metalanguage that developed such a robust tradition of resisting the linguistic concept of “norm” which is dramatically visible in the tireless creation of neologisms [3].
2. To fight tooth and nail against prescriptivism seems to be a dominant practice of academese developed within the English discourse. Henry Hitchings makes a convincing case of it in his seminal book “The Language Wars: A History of Proper English” that gets down to business with chapter one under the self-explanatory heading of “To boldly go” [10].
3. The rallying cry of English language scholars today is: “Both standard and non-standard dialects are marvels of human mastery. Neither is better or worse” [8, c. 11]. James Paul Jee makes a good case of it by comparing samples of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE for short) with standard English and drawing a conclusion that sometimes AAVE reflects reality clearer than standard English does.
4. The experiment with AAVE (sometimes known as Ebonics) seemed to have dealt a powerful blow against the linguists who fight the war of attrition against the so called sticklers. The Oakland School Board’s December 18, 1996 proposal to recognize "Ebonics" (AAVE) raised a storm of protest from around the USA. By legalizing Ebonics in the classroom the Oakland School Board's decision set up a linguistic ghetto for Afro-American children who turned out to be deprived in this way from the career opportunities paved by standard English [6]. One good thing about the Oakland decision is that it brings to national attention the fact that existing methods of teaching English are often failing miserably for working class African American children.
5. Kachalova’s textbook, as all really useful grammars, is deeply rooted in prescriptivism, the belief that one variety of a language has an inherently higher value than others and ought to be the norm for the whole of the speech community [7, c. 194].
6. It will not take you long to discover that Kachalova’s text book is a most diligent course of English grammar that covers its system in a recipient’s friendly way: language facts fall into the classical subdivision of morphology and syntax; each part ends up with a summary of graphically and numerically arranged rules; to save time examples are accompanied by translation; the units under analysis are foregrounded by bold type; the forms of the verb are arranged in easy-to-memorize tables; exercises are supplied by keys, to name but a few of the assets of the textbook under consideration.
7. Still, Kachalova’s text book falls easy prey to criticism on the part of apostles of “natural” English, such as “Longman Language Activator” (natural vocabulary) [5] and “Practical English Usage” (natural grammar) [11]: Kachalova’s text book relies on neutral vocabulary of high frequency (peppering it now and then with terms of business English – a considerable disadvantage to the textbook on grammar, in my humble opinion) and consistent avoidance of such reprehensible things as split infinitives and double negatives.
8. The weakest point of Kachalova’s prescriptivism occurs in the Keys that contain numerous mistakes, such as has raining at p. 586 (instead of has been raining), leaved at p. 583 (instead of left), he will leave Moscow when the contract will be signedat p. 598 (instead of when the contract has been signed), I have been told yesterday at p. 601 (instead of I was told yesterday), He said that the articles on agriculture had often been publishing at p. 604 (instead of had often been published) etc.
9. Kachalova’s prescriptivism gets under your skin in an especially bad way when you come across examples that fall into the category of “typical mistakes”: for instance, the verbs dislike and afford are shown by the textbook to combine with both the Infinitive and the Gerund [1, c. 271]. That’s a common error: afford can be used only with the Infinitive [4, c. 5]. The same is true about dislike: it can be used only with the Gerund.
10. The unhappy sides of prescriptivism come to the fore in the refusal of the text book to discuss the problems of split infinitives, double negatives, the use of will in the first person (instead of shall) and the like. However, to replace shall by will has been a tendency for over a century, and this tendency seems to be the only point of practical English usage that is registered in the memory of pupils (a very curious fact against the backdrop of the problem’s being silenced by Kachalova: teachers seem to have found a very simple way of showing their breakaway from the bonds of prescriptivism).
11. However, teaching of English as a foreign language knows the importance of the strategic “Thou shalt not”. Here is howThe Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language approaches prescriptive grammar:

“Traditional grammar reflects the approach to language known as prescriptivism – the view that one variety of a language has an inherently higher value than others and ought to be the norm for the whole of the speech community. A distinction is often drawn between prescriptive rules, which state usages considered to be acceptable, and proscriptive rules, which state usages  to beavoided – grammatical ‘do’s and don’ts’. In fact the “Thou Shalt Not” tradition predominates, with most recommendations being phrased negatively” [Crystal. 1996: 194.]

Conclusions:

1. The Stickler’s way is the only way to teaching English grammar both to native speakers and to non-natives the difference being in the exposure of students to non-standard varieties of English that can be useful with the native speakers, but counterproductive with students who are learning English as a foreign language.
2. The assets of Kachalova’s textbook dwarf its drawbacks that can easily be accounted for by the teacher in the classroom.
3. Prescreptivism has a brilliant future in terms of the market competition of grammar textbooks for learners of English. Kachalova’s textbook is a convincing case to testify to it.

References

1. Качалова К. Н., Израилевич Е. Е. Практическая грамматика английского языка с упражнениями и ключами. – М: ЮНВЕС, 1996. – 717 с.
2. Овсянников В. В. Теория перевода: актуальные проблемы научных исследований / Учебное пособие для студентов переводческих отделений университетов. – Запорожье: «Просвіта», 2008. – 232 с.
3. Овсянников В.В. Модальность и перевод: монография. – Запорожье: Просвіта, 2011. – 364 с.
4. Хитон, Дж. Б., Н. Д. Тэртон. Словарь типичных ошибок английского языка. – М.: Рус. Яз., 1991. – 297 с.
5. Activator – Longman Language Activator: The World’s First Production Dictionary. – London: Longman, 1997. – 1587 p.
6. Crystal, David. The future of Englishes // English Today 59, Vol. 15, № 2, 1999, p.10 – 20.
7. Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language.– Cambridge University Press, 1996. – 489 p.
8. Gee, James Paul. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. – Routledge: London and New York, 2012. – 242 p.
9. Greene, Robert Lane. You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity. – New York: Delacorte Press, 2011. – 312 p.
10. Hitchings, Henry. The Language Wars: A History of Proper English. – New-York: Picador, 2012. – 408 p.
11. Swan, Michael. Practical English Usage.– Oxford University Press, 1995. – 658 p.
12. McWhorter, John H. Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English. – Gotham Books, 2008. – 230 p.