Abstract

Every grammar as a model of a natural language is a more or less complex system. This article argues that classes in which students have to reflect on grammar should make this fact transparent, and one way to do this is by stimulating inventions. Positive experiences in secondary schools in Switzerland and in the University of Cologne show: Students who are inspired to create a fictive grammar for a fictive language recognize the general relevance of a grammar and start to reflect on the necessity that grammars have to be organized and complex in one way or the other. Crucially, they also start to reflect more profoundly on the organization of the grammar of their own first language.