In typological terms, educational texts are associated with scientific texts and occupy an important place in the system of speech utterance forms. In turn, grammatical texts, as studies show, played a significant role in the development of the entire European science. The appearance of German grammars in 18th century Russia is conditioned by the special role that the German language played in Russian society, which gave the holder of this knowledge an advantage in career and scientific growth. To meet the needs of society in the educational literature, the leaders of educational and scientific institutions had to resort to various methods, namely: a) using German textbooks published and studied by in schools in Germany; b) compiling textbooks on the basis of several previously published textbooks on German grammar by other authors; c) translating well-established German grammars into Russian (with an adaptation to the Russian reader); d) preparing fundamentally new grammar textbooks, whose authors sought to make their own contribution to the teaching of the German language. The material of this study were German grammars published in Russia and reflecting the ways of creating textbooks described above: „Die Teutsche Grammatica”, (1730) by M. Schwanwitz, a bilingual grammar compiled from various works; „Nemetskaya grammatika” by I. M. Grech (1760), which is the reworked version of textbook I. K. Gottshed's textbook „Grundlegung einer deutschen Sprachkunst” (1748) translated into Russian; „Nemetskaya grammatika” by Fr. Hölterhof (1770), reflecting new approaches to the teaching of German grammar in 18th century Russia. Any grammatical description is an inhomogeneous text in which the direct content is intertwined with metalanguage fragments that perform explanatory, connecting, structuring and other functions. In this case, the terminology is in the forefront of a metalanguage description. In this respect, the scientific style of grammatical descriptions in Germany and Russia in the 18th century gives a clear picture of terminological discrepancies. Compare, for example, the definition of grammar in the German and Russian texts of M. Schwanwitz's „Nemetskaya grammatika“ (1730): „Die Grammatica ist eine Kunst, rein zu reden und recht zu schreiben“ and „Грамматика есть художество, право глаголати и писати”. It is easy to see that the definition of grammar in Russian bears in itself explicit features of the Church Slavonic style in comparison with the verified language of the German definition. The metatext fragments used by authors of German grammars to explain the terms used and grammar rules have a formal expression. In the textbooks of M. Schwanwitz and I. M. Grech these fragments have the form of notes inside the text and explanatory footnotes at the bottom of pages. In Fr. Hölterhof's textbook of German grammar, which has a more complex structure, metatext inclusions have the nature of notes within the text, explanatory footnotes, control questions and exercises for self-mastering the material. Prospects for further research are in the field of comparative typological analysis of German and Russian grammatical texts which form an important part of European humanitarian discourse. This implies identification, description and classification of grammatical descriptions presented in the scientific discourses of Germany and Russia in the 18th century.