1 ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS: State of the Art in Grammar Instruction Rusdiana Junaid rosejunaid246@yahoo.com.au Abstract The teaching of grammar has fluctuated and shifted over years. This paper addresses issues such as different ways of teaching grammar, changes in ideas and practices at the present stage of its development as well as the current state of the art in grammar instruction. Several grammar textbooks which were published in different years also are looked at in order to discover the extent of change in terms of the materials used to teach grammar from time to time. A Considerable array of English language teaching methods is available for teachers to utilize since the 1980s. Before deciding to employ a particular method, however educational practitioners need to take several things into consideration such as the objectives of the instruction, the needs, the interests, the expectation, the age and level of the learners, and the available supporting facilities. Of equally important, the possible constraints such as the environment where the students are learning, the time, and the expectation of the institution are also need to be considered. Introduction The notion of the teaching of grammar in formal educational institutions has always been a controversial issue. One of the arguments against the teaching of grammar is that studying the rules of grammar is a useless, old-fashioned, non-communicative and simply a waste of students’ valuable time and energy (Byrd, 1994; Thornbury, 1999:19). On the other hand, one counterclaim which puts grammar in the forefront is that the teaching of grammar offers the learners “the means for potentially limitless linguistic creativity” since “grammar is a kind of sentence-making machine” (Thornbury, 1999:15). Similar to the English language teaching methods, as they are inextricably intertwined, the principal grammar teaching methods have come and gone over the years in which each method has its own distinctive characteristics on top of its strengths and weaknesses. It is worth for ELS/EFL teachers to be familiar with variety of grammar teaching methods to make a wise decision concerning the choice of a method to apply and to weigh up the available materials to use. This paper mainly discusses the historical background of the teaching of grammar which has fluctuated and shifted over years in order to identify the main trends in a