Linguists have argued that concepts such as word order (Wortstellung) or agreement (Kongruenz) can enrich the teaching of grammar in secondary schools and strengthen the understanding of traditional notions like finite verb form (finite Verbform) and indirect object (indirektes Objekt). But how do teachers actually feel about this alleged added value of linguistic concepts? This article provides insight into the beliefs of 213 teachers of Dutch (L1), English (L2) and German (L3) in the Netherlands. Successively, the goals of grammar education, the general and subject-specific utility scores of each linguistic concept and its possibilities to provoke crosslinguistic language awareness in the domain of grammar are presented. On average, the data from the digital questionnaire indicate that teachers consider tense/aspect (Zeit/Aspekt), agreement and syntactical function (grammatische Funktion) to be the most useful for their own practice. The participants of the focus group interviews endorse the added value of both agreement and syntactical function, while preferring word order over tense/aspect with regard to a cross-linguistic approach. These results form a promising basis for the development of crosslinguistic grammar teaching and testing materials for secondary education in Dutch, English and German.

Keywords: teacher beliefs, linguistic concepts, cross-linguistic grammar education, language awareness