Because English grammar consists of a long list of features, it is impractical to include all of them in a single grammar test. It would be useful to identify among all those features the best indicators of students’ grammatical knowledge and ability so that we could focus on what were the most representative knowledge and skills and simplify grammar assessment. This study is a preliminary, small-scale attempt to do just that. It surveyed 72 high school teachers and 129 Grade 12 students on their opinions of which features of grammar best represented grammatical knowledge and ability. They were asked to choose five indicators, including the best one, and provide reasons for thinking so. The relative pronoun was selected most frequently as the best indicator of grammatical knowledge and ability, followed by subject-verb agreement, the subjunctive, to-infinitives, and participles. This paper does not claim these five features to definitively represent the best indicators; further research should be conducted.

1. MOTIVATION AND PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
 2. PREVIOUS RESEARCH
  2.1. Conventional Approaches to Grammar Assessment
  2.2. Automated Programs Yielding Syntactic Indicators
 3. METHOD
  3.1. Data Collection
  3.2. Instrument
 4. RESULTS
  4.1. Perceptions of the Top Five Grammar Indicators
  4.2. Perceptions of the Best Grammar Indicators
  4.3. Reasons for Selecting the Best Indicator
 5. DISSCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
 REFERENCES

• Sungsoo Kim(Chilseong High School)
• Jungok Bae(Kyungpook National University) Corresponding author