diff --git a/src/services/services.ts b/src/services/services.ts
index b27ab36b915..0a7aa8652f1 100644
--- a/src/services/services.ts
+++ b/src/services/services.ts
@@ -1118,7 +1118,7 @@ module ts {
     }
 
     export interface Classifier {
-        getClassificationsForLine(text: string, lexState: EndOfLineState): ClassificationResult;
+        getClassificationsForLine(text: string, lexState: EndOfLineState, classifyKeywordsInGenerics?: boolean): ClassificationResult;
     }
 
     export interface DocumentRegistry {
@@ -5307,7 +5307,8 @@ module ts {
             return true;
         }
 
-        function getClassificationsForLine(text: string, lexState: EndOfLineState): ClassificationResult {
+        // 'classifyKeywordsInGenerics' should be 'true' when a syntactic classifier is not present.
+        function getClassificationsForLine(text: string, lexState: EndOfLineState, classifyKeywordsInGenerics?: boolean): ClassificationResult {
             var offset = 0;
             var lastTokenOrCommentEnd = 0;
             var token = SyntaxKind.Unknown;
@@ -5395,7 +5396,7 @@ module ts {
                              token === SyntaxKind.StringKeyword ||
                              token === SyntaxKind.NumberKeyword ||
                              token === SyntaxKind.BooleanKeyword) {
-                        if (angleBracketStack > 0) {
+                        if (angleBracketStack > 0 && !classifyKeywordsInGenerics) {
                             // If it looks like we're could be in something generic, don't classify this 
                             // as a keyword.  We may just get overwritten by the syntactic classifier,
                             // causing a noisy experience for the user.
diff --git a/src/services/shims.ts b/src/services/shims.ts
index fdea0202323..c3df67e6db1 100644
--- a/src/services/shims.ts
+++ b/src/services/shims.ts
@@ -162,7 +162,7 @@ module ts {
     }
 
     export interface ClassifierShim extends Shim {
-        getClassificationsForLine(text: string, lexState: EndOfLineState): string;
+        getClassificationsForLine(text: string, lexState: EndOfLineState, classifyKeywordsInGenerics?: boolean): string;
     }
 
     export interface CoreServicesShim extends Shim {
@@ -821,8 +821,8 @@ module ts {
         }
 
         /// COLORIZATION
-        public getClassificationsForLine(text: string, lexState: EndOfLineState): string {
-            var classification = this.classifier.getClassificationsForLine(text, lexState);
+        public getClassificationsForLine(text: string, lexState: EndOfLineState, classifyKeywordsInGenerics?: boolean): string {
+            var classification = this.classifier.getClassificationsForLine(text, lexState, classifyKeywordsInGenerics);
             var items = classification.entries;
             var result = "";
             for (var i = 0; i < items.length; i++) {