Slovnične vsebine pri jezikovnem pouku slovenščine pred prenovo učnih načrtov

This article discusses how the metalinguistic part of Slovenian language teaching should be organized so that it can contribute to the development of critical communicative competence, and so that it is mean­ingful and at the same time sufficiently time-effective to faciliatate as much active work as possible, and critical text formation and reception in (the remainder of) language instruction. The fundamental change introduced by the new Slovenian primary- and secondary-school grammars (2017) is a shift from a syntax-based division of parts of speech to one based on morphology and semantics. Using practical examples, this article describes the advantages of such a shift, while also presenting certain other innovative solutions included in the grammar or more recent textbooks. Within this context, it draws attention to the significantly simplified coverage of pronouns and adverbs, numerals as modifiers or heads, and the definition of modifiers and heads in general, as well as the treatment of conjunctions and declensions. It highlights areas in which, to date, grammatical coverage has been made needlessly complex (e.g., for defining the subject, for coordinate clauses and semantic relations, and for terminology). Every new solution is accompanied by examples of solutions (or problems) from current textbooks, as well as historical insights where needed.