Should we teach our students English grammar?

According to an article published on Jan. 19, 2005 Times Newspapers in Britian, teaching grammar to our students is not whorthwhile in terms of improving their English writing ability. However, it also reported that some scholars disagree with the results of this research.

I strongly believe that in an EFL environment teaching our students important and practical grammar is extremely essential. "Sentence combining", as the news story mentioned, is an alternative to grammar teaching in the classroom if the purpose of teaching grammar is to improve students' writing ability. Probably I should give my students more sentence combination practice in the future.