Somewhere over the border: Grammar in a class of its own

Abstract

The Grammar Gang blog has now passed its fourth anniversary as a borderless, non-proprietary language and learning online classroom. It gives wing to the aspirations of academic staff from four universities to explore language and learning across hemispheres. The Blog’s recent birthday provides a timely opportunity to explore how this collaboration takes place and some possible ways to extend language, learning and academic support services. The Grammar Gang is an online classroom where people around the world can learn and explore their interest in language in a fun, conversational way. It is also a borderless classroom which queries the notion of institutional ‘ownership’ in its traditional sense. Further, it opens wide the debate around the rights and wrongs of English language expression and learning. Four members of the Grammar Gang examine the implications of this digital collaboration in this context by addressing the ways in which the blog is used and some of the thinking within the literature around global English and institutional ownership of knowledge. The Grammar Gang continues to be an ‘adventure across the hemispheres’, providing a model for others to follow.