gasstationwithoutpumps on the two learning systems and grammar

Succinct and on the money:

Big chunks of grammar are rule-based learning, at least at the level of what distinguishes academic writing from casual conversation. The rules are articulated in grammar handbooks and can be consciously applied.

Grammar at the level of what sentences one can use in casual conversation is much more “information integration”, as it takes skilled linguists substantial effort to express the grammatical constraints in rules, and fairly complicated rule systems are needed for even crude approximations to grammaticality

That’s exactly right.

The principles Katharine and I teach in our curriculum can be learned–quickly learned–via rule-based learning:

• End focus: put the most important information in the sentence last 
• Known-new contract: start with information the reader already knows, proceed to new information he or she doesn’t know (or hasn’t heard you say yet)
• Cohesive topic chains: many if not most of your sentences in a paragraph should have the same or closely-related grammatical subject (I think the most effective percentage in a fairly long paragraph is around 75%)

And see:
The most important research on learning I’ve read

Listening to my grammar brain

Speaking of who/whom, here’s a pronoun case chart from cengage.

I assume it’s from the textbook Evergreen: A Guide to Writing by Susan Fawcett.

Personal narrative: I saw a pronoun case chart for the first time in my life when I started teaching freshman composition. Up to that moment, I had no idea what the grammatical distinction was between who and whom; I certainly had no clue what the word “case” might mean, or what part of grammar it applied to.

The chart was a revelation.

Very satisfying!

Interestingly, I discovered that in fact I did know the distinction unconsciously, deep down in my basal ganglia, where grammar resides. I had picked it up in spite of the fact that whom has been dead for a century.

My basal ganglia knew the dead-for-a-century business, too.

Grammar brain knows.

The basal ganglia are much smarter than we give them credit for, but that is a subject for another day.