Knowledge Of Grammar Resulting On Better Writing
24 January 2006
Until the 1960’s the vast majority of schools in England, and at that
other parts of the traditional English speaking world such as the US,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, taught grammar in schools.
Deemed by some academics as pointless it was found that by 1980 the
tradition of teaching grammar had disappeared in state funded
comprehensive schools.
In the 1960’s many reports were published which stated that the
teaching of grammar does not benefit children’s abilities to write in
fact some research material adversely claimed that grammar had a
detrimental affect on children.
In fact according to Dick Hudson from the University of Central London
a list of studies through out the 60s and 70s were considered to be
classic support for the view that grammar teaching does nothing for
children’s writing.
Since the 1990’s schools have reintroduced grammar in the form of
linguistics and many linguists have been able to contribute to grammar
in the National Curriculum.
Upon delving into the essay question it can be noticed that the
subject matter is rather wide. For the purpose of this essay in order
to abstain from lengthening the paper it has been decided that certain
words should be clarified and hence accordingly discussed. Points that
need to be kept in mind have been listed below.
a. To begin with, the question uses the word ‘grammar’, for the
purpose of this paper, in order to refrain from lengthening the paper;
we shall exclusively concentrate on the grammar of the English
language and at that as taught in schools in England. The history of
English grammar in schools situated in Wales and Northern Ireland has
been relatively different where as the education system in Scotland
has been totally independent in relation to England. It should also be
kept in mind that results of studies carried out abroad have been
included at times.
b. Another issue which needs to be touched upon presently is regarding
the meaning of the wording in the question ‘ability to write’. The
wording has two most obvious implications which I have listed below.
1. ‘Ability to write’ could mean good creative writing which would be
writing which is interesting, captivating and enjoyable but also open
to grammatical corrections.
2. The second understanding one could assume would be the development
of flawless English which is free from error and flows. It would also
be considered to be at times perhaps enjoyable and creative and at
times not.
Structured Grammatical Exercises:
Professor Richard Hudson says that structured grammatical analysis
where in which a child is taught grammar in a covert manner with less
usage of metalanguage and the teachers purposefully diverts from the
traditional teaching form of grammar most certainly benefits
children’s writing.
In fact in some studies Hudson keenly points out that the overt method
of teaching grammar produces better results than the more traditional
teaching methods of grammatical analysis.
The Bullock Report
The UK government’s Bullock report in the 1960’s on English teaching
was a classical study investigating the ‘grammatical analysis’
approach to teaching grammar. The Bullock Report found that the
teaching of grammar needed some drastic changing it concluded: ‘What
has been shown is that the teaching of traditional analytic grammar
does not appear to improve performance in writing. From the above it seems that the report was merely intending to encourage teachers to improve standards of grammar teaching rather
than end its’ being taught. But with in the space of the next decade
rather than improving standards England saw a dramatic end of grammar
in English schools.
People who are of an opinion which is anti-grammar forward the
argument that the Bullock report supports the move to the abolishment
of grammar. But when we look in to the Bullock report it can be seen
that is was more in favor of improving the teaching of grammar rather
than totally ending it.
At the moment in the UK it can be said that there is a growing trend
showing that the teaching of grammar could improve writing standards.
This growing trend is most evident with the presence of grammar as
being one of the main pillars of the newly introduced National
Literacy and the National Curriculum for English. Hudson says, “one of the reasons given for this major change of teaching policy is the beneficial effect of grammar teaching
on the children’s writing.”
Geoff Barton
In the UK, Geoff Barton, a secondary school teacher with a training in
linguistic, reported (1998) that some of his weakest students benefit
‘dramatically’ from an exploration of simple compound and complex
sentence types.
Mary Mason
Mary Mason, a linguistically qualified teacher, designed a complete 3
year course in academic language for 12 to 14 year olds which now have
been taught over a number of years in several schools. The course improved writing skills dramatically.
So which grammar is best?
Hudson points out that studies regarding grammar have explored three
types of grammar, the traditional grammar, transformational grammar
and systematic grammar. Fundamentally it still remains unclear as to
which form of grammar is best. Many different researches have
suggested their own opinions regarding this but it still remains
debatable and open to scrutiny.
So with regards to the research material available regarding the
affects of grammar on the writing of children we can safely say that
the vast majority of such material is clearly indicative that some
sort of grammar in fact benefits the writings of children.
Looking at the research evidence it seem that the actual content of
old fashioned grammar and the method of teaching was probably the main
problem why many studies that were undertaken by academics concluded
that grammar does not benefit language and writing skills.
From the above it can be said that although there is a disagreement as
to which type of grammar is advantageous for children in enabling them
to write English but fundamentally the studies show that there is a
majority thinking that some sort of grammar is much better than none.
An observation
After having completed my secondary education in a comprehensive
school with no knowledge of grammar what so ever I, like many other
16-17 year olds embarked upon studying at the internationally
acclaimed seat of learning for traditional Islamic theology and
classical Arabic, Darul Uloom al-Arabiyyah al-Islamiyyah, Bury.
Arabic was taught by learning Arabic grammar which involved learning
by rota, Nahw (syntax) and Sarf (morphology). Students would learn the
Arabic and Urdu texts of classical grammar manuscripts some of which
dated back to over a thousand years. Students were also required to
learn and inculcate in themselves the method of translating Arabic to
Urdu. Looking back at the course structure it now transpires that the
course never really emphasized writing Arabic, in fact one would
estimate that in the first three years of study (the course was a six
year study) students spent a mere hardly any time involved in creative
writing. But nevertheless out of the six former luminaries of Darul
Uloom who are presently at study undertaking the 3rd year English in
Education Module, 4 of them received As in their A level Classical
Arabic Examinations, an examination the vast part of which required
students to write stories in Arabic which as the syllabus stated was
supposed to be creative and free from error. The remaining two
students received a B and a C, marks clearly reflected the competence
of the students in their mastering of concepts of grammar.
From the above it can be noticed that a mere strict and rigid study of
grammar where in which metalanguage does improve children’s abilities
to write.
Richard Hudson
This top-down pressure for KAL was further increased by one of the
first steps taken by the new Labour government in 1997, the trial
introduction of the National Literacy Strategy (extended to all
primary schools in 1999). This is a highly focused programme for
raising reading and writing standards in primary schools (years 1 to
6); it was paired from the start with a National Numeracy Strategy,
and more recently it has fed into the English strand of a National
Strategy for years 7 to 9 in secondary school.[1] The government has
given this programme very high priority both in terms of publicity and
in terms of resources, so schools have been bombarded with guidance
and training materials and all serving teachers have had a certain
amount of training. Not surprisingly there has been some resistance,
but by and large the Literacy Strategy is accepted as part of primary
education, and most teachers seem to agree that its benefits outweigh
its weaknesses. During the first few years after it was introduced,
literacy standards improved dramatically before stabilising at a
higher level, but it is hard to separate the effects of KAL from all
the other changes that were introduced at the same time.
Cont metalanguage yes Hudson
In the world-wide debate about grammar teaching one of the main
questions concerns terminology: should the teacher use specialist
metalanguage? In the UK context this is not an issue: technical
terminology is accepted as a necessary part of explicit teaching.
Indeed, the documents that launched the National Literacy Strategy
included a glossary of 200 technical terms, of which about 90 related
to grammar. These are terms which teachers are expected to use in
class, and which children learn to use; so the UK’s primary schools
are now full of five-year olds talking about phonemes and adjectives.
Since these documents had the official stamp of approval, this
glossary counts as the first-ever government-sponsored glossary of
grammatical terminology in the UK.
The Bullock Report
The UK government’s Bullock report in the 1960’s on English teaching
was a classical study and found that grammar teaching needed some
drastic changing. It concluded: ‘What has been shown is that the
teaching of traditional analytic grammar does not appear to improve
performance in writing.’[6] (HMSO 1975:169)
The Bullock Report was intending to encourage teachers to improve
standards of English grammar teaching but with in the space of the
next decade rather than improving standards England saw a dramatic end
of grammar in English schools.
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