University College Londongrammar Instruction

[Hudson, Richard. “Grammar Instruction.” In Handbook of Writing Research (Second Edition), edited by Charles MacArthur, Steve Graham, and Jill Fitzgerald, 288–300. New York: Guilford, 2016.] ]

Grammar instruction

Richard Hudson

University College London Grammar instruction:

A brief history (and geography) of grammar teaching

Grammar instruction is an extremely ancient art, and almost certainly one of the oldest branches of formal education in literate societies. The reason for this is its close relationship to the art of writing, which defines the notion of

‘literate’. As early as the start of the second millennium BC, Babylonian scribes were studying clay tablets showing lists of verb forms in two languages: a dead language (in this case, Sumerian) and their own language, Akkadian (Gragg,

1994; Huber, 2007). Four thousand years later, grammar is still a central pillar of education in many countries, and this chapter is evidence that it is still under consideration even where it was abandoned in the twentieth century.

During the intervening centuries the study and teaching of grammar tracked the development of literacy, as witness the term grammar itself, derived from the Greek grammatiké, as in techné grammatiké, ‘the art of writing’ (which itself was built out of gramma, ‘letter’, derived from gráphein, ‘to draw or write’).

The Babylonian grammarians may have influenced Panini, the founder of the

Indian grammatical tradition used in the teaching of Sanskrit -another dead language (Black, 1991; Shukla, 2006), and meanwhile, Alexander’s empire and the Roman Empire disseminated the cultural legacy of classical Greece across

Europe and Asia, with the result that grammar dominated the education of medieval Europe. As in Babylon and India, grammar was a tool in the teaching of a dead language (Latin), but as the vernaculars rose in status, it was applied to them as well; so young Shakespeare learned to write (and speak) Latin by first learning how English grammar worked (Gwosdek, 2013), and schools established in England at that time were called ‘grammar schools’.

2 Since the medieval period, grammar teaching spread throughout Europe; and in many European countries and ex-colonies, grammar still flourishes in the classroom. To mention one example, the Czech Republic takes the teaching of grammar so seriously that school children’s analyses of sentences might be sufficiently accurate to use in projects such as machine translation (Hana &

Hladka, 2012). Another European country, France, has returned from a temporary grammar-free period during the 1960s and 1970s to their more

‘normal’ state, though with some changes to the approach (Bentolila, 2006;

Fougerouse, 2001). In short, most countries in Europe do see grammar instruction as an important part of their school curriculum; and the same is true of previous European colonies such as Brazil.

The big exception consists of all the major English-speaking countries, and in particular Britain, the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In all these countries, systematic instruction in grammar went out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s (Rothery, 1996; Kolln & Hancock, 2005; Carter, 1996;

Locke, 2009). At least in Britain (the country I know best), this change started in the teaching of first-language English, and then about a decade later extended to foreign-language teaching. In Britain, the outcome was a school system in which virtually no grammar at all was taught in any state schools, though it persisted in some fee-paying schools (Hudson & Walmsley, 2005). The USA presents a more complex picture (Cutler & Graham, 2008; Kiuhara, Graham, & Hawken, 2009;

Gilbert & Graham, 2010; Applebee & Langer, 2011). On the one hand, we note

“the anti-grammar policy that has dominated the American English curriculum for forty years” (Kolln et al., 2005), p. 16), and the compromise of ‘grammar in context’, which advocates a very small minimum of grammar to be taught only

3 when relevant to the individual pupil (Weaver, 1996). On the other hand, many schools also continue a long American tradition of ‘sentence diagramming’

(Brinton & Brinton, 2010, Florey, 2006; Hefty, Ortiz, & Nelson, 2008) which has never had much impact on British education.

This brief review of the history and geography of grammar instruction has raised a number of general issues which are reviewed in the next section.

The rest of this paper will continue to focus on the teaching of writing; but it will also emphasise that writing is only one possible application of grammar.

Issues in the teaching of grammar

The main issues fall reasonably clearly into these five categories:

 Why should grammar be taught?

 When should grammar be taught?

 How should grammar be taught?

 What grammar should be taught?

 Who should teach grammar?

In each case, the term ‘grammar’ means explicit teaching about grammar,

including technical terminology.

Why should grammar be taught? Grammar clearly has a cost – the time and effort expended by both the teacher and the students – so it is important to be sure that it produces benefits that outweigh the cost. At least in principle grammar teaching could be helpful in a number of different ways:

 in the teaching of writing (the main focus of this chapter)

4  in the teaching of reading, where it can be shown that complex syntax and

vocabulary are easier to read after some explicit instruction (Chipere,

 in the teaching of foreign languages, where it is widely accepted that

'focus on forms' (i.e. direct teaching about grammatical patterns) is

helpful (Norris & Ortega, 2000; Ellis, 2008a; Scheffler & Cinciala, 2011).

 in the development of general cognitive abilities - an aim which has

vanished from recent discussions of grammar teaching, but which was

explicit in nineteenth-century school books passages in passages like the

following:

Grammar is eminently a means of mental training; and while it will

train the student in subtle and acute reasoning, it will at the same time,

if rightly presented, lay the foundation of a keen observation and a

correct literary taste. The continued contact with the highest thoughts

of the best minds will create a thirst for the "well of English

undefiled." (Baskervill & Sewell, 1895), no page)

In short, it is not only writing that may benefit from a knowledge of

grammar – a point missed in most of the research; and the study of

grammar, like the study of, say, mathematics or literature, may be good for

the mind.

When should grammar be taught? The question of timing has two parts, relating to age and to time-tabling.

 How old should pupils be before they can benefit from teaching about

grammar? One belief is that grammar is too difficult for children in primary

5 school (i.e. up to the age of 11); the contrasting view is that even primary-

age children can benefit.

 As far as timing is concerned the choice is between systematic teaching,

with planned instruction in grammar following a syllabus based on the

internal logic of grammar itself; and the approach mentioned earlier called

‘grammar in context’, in which grammar is taught only as and when it

becomes relevant in the teaching of writing.

How should grammar be taught? The ‘How?’ question divides into three parts.

 What should be the role of technical grammatical metalanguage? Three

answers have been defended:

o None at all – grammar should be taught through activities such as

‘sentence combining’ (Hillocks & Mavrognes, 1986; Hillocks, 2003)

without using technical terms.

o As target – the main purpose of teaching grammar is to teach

terminology, with rote memorization of definitions continuing a

very long tradition of grammar teaching based on the catechism -

(Gwosdek, 2013).

o As instrument – the main aim of teaching grammar is an

understanding of how language works, so teachers need

terminology to communicate with pupils.

 Is language itself the best medium for showing how a sentence is

structured, or would it be better to use some kind of diagrammatic notation?

 Should the examples used in the teaching be made up, or should they be

taken from published texts or other sources of actual usage?

6 These questions distinguish two very different kinds of grammar

instruction:

 the extraordinarily long tradition sketched above , in which children

memorized definitions that led to verbal descriptions of words in

specially selected sentences.

 teaching aimed at a deep understanding of grammar which can be

demonstrated by drawing structure diagrams for almost any sentences.

What grammar should be taught? This question breaks down into four parts.

 What approach: prescriptive, aimed at the avoidance of error, and

typically consisting of a long list of ‘common errors’, or descriptive, aimed at

understanding of the pupil’s existing grammatical resources and also growth

through learning new resources.

 How much grammar: very little (just the main word classes) or the

entire contents of one of the recently-published ‘blockbuster’ grammars of

English (e.g. Huddleston & Pullum, 2002) - or something in between? And

more precisely, how much grammar is needed by teachers as opposed to

pupils?

 What areas: syntax, morphology, lexical relations, meaning or

pronunciation? Each of these areas is relevant to some aspect of writing:

syntax to sentence-level structure, morphology to spelling, lexical relations

to vocabulary choice, and pronunciation to both spelling and punctuation;

and all these aspects of writing are important because they affect the way in

which subject-matter is evaluated (Graham, Harris, & Hebert, 2011).

7  Which ‘school’ of grammatical theory, if any? This gives a three-way

choice:

o school grammar, often called ‘traditional grammar’ because it

transmitted the tradition of grammar taught in school without any

research input; this tradition can be found in any school-grammar

textbook of the early twentieth century (e.g. those in the UK

authored by Ronald Ridout);

o the research-based but ‘theory-neutral’ grammatical analysis of

the blockbuster grammars;

o Systemic Functional Linguistics, which has a large and active

constituency among teachers and teacher-trainers (e.g. Williams,

2004, Derewianka & Jones, 2010).

Who should teach grammar? If grammar is only relevant to writing, then it should be taught by the teacher of writing, whether a primary generalist or a secondary specialist. But if it is also relevant to reading and to foreign languages, and foreign languages are taught by a different teacher from writing and reading, these teachers should collaborate in one of two ways.

 One way is minimal collaboration, with neither paying much attention to

what the other teaches. However ridiculous this policy is, it is widespread in

the UK.

 In contrast, maximum collaboration brings together the teachers of first-

language writing and reading and of foreign languages in the sharing of

terminology, activities, insights and plans. The foreign language teacher

8 reinforces and deepens the ideas and content introduced by the first-

language teacher, and both teachers and pupils benefit.

Another fundamental issue for teachers is how they should develop their

own knowledge of grammar to the point where they feel confident

presenting it to a class of (possibly) thoughtful pupils. In an ideal world, a

new teacher would have a solid foundation in elementary grammar derived

from primary and secondary school and refined during undergraduate

study, and many countries do indeed provide this ideal world. For example,

in the Netherlands, teachers have a solid training in grammar and reportedly

enjoy teaching it (Gert Rijlaarsdam at http://teach-

grammar.com/context#nl). Unfortunately, the grammar-free decades in the

UK and other anglophone countries have produced a serious problem: a

generation of established teachers who learned very little grammar in

school.

Theoretical models of grammar teaching for writing

Discussions of grammar teaching and writing tend to polarise round one of two views:

 Grammar teaching does not improve writing.

 Grammar teaching does improve writing.

These views are generally supported as much by political and educational

ideology as by careful argument, so it is hard to find anything which could

reasonably be called a ‘theoretical model’ of how grammar teaching might

affect writing. The rest of this section is an attempt to fill this gap.

9 We start with an important distinction between two kinds of teaching

about grammar, which we can call 'teaching grammar' and 'applying

grammar':

Teaching grammar introduces the ideas and terminology of grammar,

and teaches them as a system. It includes terms such as ‘noun’ and ‘noun

phrase’, ‘relative clause’, ‘subject’ and ‘modifier’, as well as the

understanding and knowledge needed to recognise examples and to discuss

the pros and cons of competing analyses. This knowledge is a major part of

what in the UK is called ‘knowledge about language’ (Carter, 1990), so we

can call it ‘knowledge about grammar’, a conscious awareness of

grammatical patterning, in contrast with the unconscious ‘knowledge of

grammar’ that every speaker has.

Applying grammar uses knowledge about grammar to help in teaching

other subjects, such as writing. For instance the teacher could use terms like

‘relative clause’ and ‘modify’ in discussing alternative ways of expressing the

same idea. This is still a kind of ‘grammar teaching’, and good teaching of

grammar may often lead directly to applications of grammar, but

conceptually it is as different from teaching grammar as physics and

geography are from mathematics. This distinction will play a fundamental

part in the following discussion.

One rather obvious model links teaching grammar, via knowledge about grammar and applying grammar, to improved writing - a three-step model:

 Teaching grammar (TG) produces Knowledge about grammar (KaG)

 KaG enables Applying grammar (AG)

10  AG improves writing.

This is the model implicit in traditional prescriptive grammar teaching; for instance, it makes no sense to teach pupils to improve their writing by not splitting infinitives until their knowledge about grammar includes the term

‘infinitive’. Figure 1 shows the elements of this model and how they interact.

produces enables TG KaG AG improves writing

Figure 1: A three-step model of grammar for writing

This model has two important characteristics which contrast with the assumptions implicit in almost all the research on the effectiveness of grammar teaching in the teaching of writing:

 It does not assume a direct causal connection between teaching of

grammar and writing skills. It predicts that it is only applying grammar that

affects writing skills; teaching grammar on its own is not enough.

 Nor does it assume that the teaching of writing is the only possible

application of knowledge about grammar, so writing does not have to justify

all the costs of TG.

In contrast, most of the research outlined above assumes that, if grammar

teaching has any effect on writing, it must be a direct consequence of

teaching grammar; and all the costs of this teaching must be justified by its

positive effects on writing. These assumptions are incorporated in the one-

step model of Figure 2. One of the curious characteristics of this model is

11 that teaching grammar produces knowledge about grammar which has no

direct connection to any improvements in writing.

produces KaG TG improves writing

Figure 2: A one-step model of grammar for writing

This is the model which has been refuted by a mass of research since the

mid-twentieth century which has shown that teaching grammar, in itself,

does not improve writing. However it does have the virtue of recognising

that teaching grammar doesn't just lead to knowledge about grammar. This

idea can be developed in two directions.

First, teaching grammar can expand the student’s knowledge of grammar

(KoG); so they learn new patterns. It is commonly assumed, in government

documents as well as in academic research, that children merely have to

learn to use their existing KoG. For instance, the National Curriculum for

England published in 2013 requires Year 2 pupils to ‘learn how to use ...

some features of written Standard English’ (Anon, 2013) – implying that the

pupils must already know what these features are, so all they have to learn

is how to use them. But maybe young children simply don't know all the

elaborate grammar and vocabulary of academic English. Patterns such as the

book in which I saw it are almost as foreign and unfamiliar to them as the

12 French equivalent. Consequently, one reasonable goal for teaching grammar

is to increase students’ KoG.

Another goal is a more diffuse and general ‘awareness’ of grammatical

patterning, often described as ‘language awareness’ (Carter, 1994; Denham

& Lobeck, 2010; Hawkins, 1994). By studying grammatical structures,

children learn to ‘notice’ them in their reading, and therefore to learn from

them in a way that they might not if their only concern was the meaning

(Keith, 1999). A great deal of research in second-language acquisition has

shown the benefit of this kind of noticing (Ellis, 2008a). Moreover, the same

awareness of grammatical structure presumably also helps learners to write

better by noticing patterns in their own writing and evaluating them against

the alternatives - past or present tense, main or subordinate clause, clause

or noun phrase, and so on.

Adding these two extra elements (increased KoG and awareness) to the

earlier three-step model gives the model in Figure 3.

improves increases KoG

increases

TG produces enables improves writing aware- noticing ness enables

produces enables improves KaG AG

Figure 3: A complex three-step model of grammar for writing

13 To make this model concrete, imagine a lesson about relative clauses. The lesson starts with examples from a passage of writing, and explores the ways in which these examples work. Some are very elementary, such as (the man) who came to the door, but others are more challenging, such as (his famous father,) a picture of whom hung over the mantelpiece. At first this example is so unfamiliar that the students can only guess its meaning, but through a mixture of formal analysis and discussion the teacher explains how the syntax works. During the discussion the students learn a number of technical grammatical terms, including relative clause and ‘pied-piped’ relative clause (a term used in modern grammatical discussions of this pattern). The lesson ends with the class producing their own examples of pied-piped relative clauses in descriptions of objects in the classroom.

In terms of the model in Figure 3, teaching grammar is what the teacher says about relative clauses and their sub-types, such as pied-piped relative clauses. It introduces technical terminology, but more importantly it makes the students aware of a grammatical structure to which they had not previously paid attention. (Incidentally, the previous sentence contained an example of a pied- piped relative clause.)

The effect of this grammar teaching is, first, an expansion of the students’ existing KoG (through the learning of the pied-piped pattern). Second, it increases their general awareness of grammatical structure through the experience of studying one particular pattern in detail, and this awareness enables noticing of relative clauses. Every relative clause they notice in their own reading or listening increases their knowledge of grammar, and being able to notice relative clauses will help them in future lessons about writing. And third,

14 it increases their knowledge about grammar in the area of relative clauses, which equips them with both the understanding and the terminology they will need in these lessons. For example, it will allow the teacher to say things like:

“How about using a pied-piped relative clause here?” or: “Remember – when you’re using a relative clause one of the options to consider is pied-piping.”

One further theoretical model remains to be discussed, namely the one assumed by the ‘grammar in context’ movement. If grammar is only taught when it is directly relevant to a writing task, then there is essentially no systematic teaching about grammar because the teacher has to provide whatever knowledge about grammar is needed at the time. Whether and how the new item of knowledge relates to the items that students know already is a matter of chance, so the students’ understanding of grammar is unlikely to be more than an unstructured list of unrelated items. The model (in Figure 4) looks very like the one in Figure 2, but unlike the latter it does not invite an expansion of the aims of grammar teaching; indeed, it assumes that grammar teaching only exists in the service of writing.

produces KaG AG improves writing

Figure 4: Another one-step model of grammar for writing

Research questions and methods

Research in the area of grammar instruction has focused on two questions:

15  What is ‘mature’ grammar? In other words, what is the target of teaching, the knowledge of grammar (KoG) of a suitably literate adult, and how is it different from the children’s existing KoG?

 How, if at all, can teaching about grammar (TaG) help to move children’s

KoG towards mature grammar?

These two questions are conceptually quite distinct, as is the research that they have provoked. The following review focuses on writing research, ignoring the vast literature on children’s speech.

Research on mature grammar uses the usual methods of textual linguistics: collecting and grammatically analysing a corpus of relevant texts.

In this case the corpus consists of two sub-corpora: a collection of selected mature writing representing the range of genres and styles which adults are expected to read and write, and a collection of children’s writing representing the typical abilities of children at various selected ages. In principle, each collection would be exhaustively analysed, with a complete syntactic and morphological analysis of every word in every sentence; and then the two analyses would be compared. However we all know in advance that most of the grammar is the same, and since the ultimate aim is to find how mature writing is different from children’s writing, it makes sense in this research to concentrate on patterns where the two collections are known, or at least believed, to differ. This selection is a methodological necessity, but also a point of weakness because the researcher’s subjective choice may well miss points of difference that are less salient but still important.

16 This research has a relatively long history, dating back at least to 1924

(Stormzand & O'Shea, 1924), and culminating in the work of Perera (Perera,

1984; Perera, 1990; Perera, 1986). We now have a solid basis of statistical information about broad changes on the route to maturity (Hudson, 2009), but we know far less about the particular words and structures which can

(and should) be taught. Most research stopped in the 1970s but the new climate makes it relevant again, so one hopes that new projects will push forward the earlier achievements.

The second research question is about whether and how teaching about grammar can help to improve children’s writing. The method in this case is classroom-based research in which the effects of TaG on writing are measured, and the effects can be isolated by comparing a ‘treatment’ group

(who do receive this teaching) with an otherwise similar control group who do not. An alternative method is a simple before/after comparison with a single group.

The matched-groups paradigm is generally considered (e.g. Kolln et al.,

2005) to have started with a research project in 1962 (Harris, 1962), in which five classes ‘with grammar’ were contrasted with five without. The treatment received by the ‘with grammar’ class was one grammar lesson per week over a two-year period. Otherwise the two groups received similar teaching, which meant that the grammar learned by the ‘with grammar’ group was never applied to the children’s writing. This is a clear example of research based on the simple one-step model of Figure 2, in which teaching grammar is expected to impact directly on children’s writing, without any intervening application. This project stimulated a spate of similar projects

17 during the next two decades in the UK and the USA (reviewed in Andrews et

al., 2004a; Andrews, 2005).

One of the key variables in this research is the content of the grammar

taught to the ‘with grammar’ group. To state the obvious, the effect of

teaching grammar is likely to vary according to what the teaching consists

of. This varies considerably in this research, and includes at least four very

different kinds of teaching, which produced predictably different results:

 traditional grammar;

 transformational grammar (Bateman & Zidonis, 1966, Elley, Barham,

Lamb, & Wyllie, 1979);

 morphology and spelling (Nunes & Bryant, 2006, Graham & Santangelo,

2014);

 ‘sentence-combining’ – an activity in which the teacher presents a

number of simple sentences for the class to combine into a single sentence

(Hillocks et al., 1986; Graham & Perin, 2007a).

The research showed consistently that traditional grammar and

transformational grammar had little or no effect on writing, whereas

morphology and spelling produced a clear positive effect, as did sentence

combining.

Another variable is the teachers’ own competence. Given that teachers, at least those in the UK, were teaching grammar purely on the basis of what they themselves had learned at school, it would not be surprising if their grasp of grammar was uncertain. This suspicion is supported by a remark in Harris’s thesis about a group of teachers:

18 sixteen teachers of English, all of more than two years' experience ... the

sentence 'Thinking it would be late, the man ran to the house' was analysed

in a passing comment to the... teachers, and at the second meeting a week

later they were asked to analyse into clauses the sentence, 'Thinking it

would be late, the man ran to the house where his friend lived' ... only four of

the sixteen teachers managed to provide a correct answer...’ (Harris 1962:

57, quoted in Walmsley, 1984)

Poorly prepared teachers are unlikely to produce good results in any subject, and it is hardly surprising to read in one report that hardly any pupils had learned even the most elementary grammatical concepts during three or more years of instruction (Macauley, 1947). This finding contrasts sharply with the enthusiasm for grammar found among Dutch teachers (Tordoir & Wesdorp,

1979), who believed strongly that it had a beneficial effect. As mentioned above, the Dutch enthusiasm for grammar persists in spite of the anglophone scepticism. One plausible explanation for the difference is that Dutch teachers have a more solid grasp of grammar.

Teachers’ own knowledge about grammar is clearly a critical constraint

on research on the effectiveness of grammar teaching, and especially so in

countries such as the UK where most teachers learned very little grammar at

school and none at university. Research has shown that both primary and

secondary English teachers typically feel, and are, inadequately prepared to

teach grammar (Cajkler & Hislam, 2002; Williamson & Hardman, 1995). The

most recent research projects in the UK have recognised this problem, and

found two solutions: either a researcher takes over the teaching (Nunes et

al., 2006), or the regular teacher is given extra training in grammar (Myhill,

19 Lines, & Watson, 2011). Perhaps it is not surprising that the results of these

projects are different from those produced in the 1960s and 1970s when it

was assumed that teachers were grammar experts. Indeed, one explanation

for the decline in grammar teaching during the early twentieth century is

that universities failed to provide the academic training that future teachers

needed (Hudson et al., 2005).

Findings

A recent research review "argues that there is no evidence for the assumption made by policy-makers and researchers in the UK that knowledge about grammar is a useful tool in helping school pupils to write more fluently and accurately." (Andrews, 2005) In other words, the review supports what the author elsewhere calls “the prevailing belief that the teaching of the principles underlying and informing word order or 'syntax' [generalised in 2005 to

‘grammar’] has virtually no influence on the writing quality or accuracy of 5 to

16 year-olds.” (Andrews et al., 2004a:1)

Although the conclusion is an accurate summary of the research reported, there are reasons for reconsidering it. First, the review overlooks a major research project on the effects of teaching morphology (which, as the study of word structure, is a major area of grammar). Bryant, Nunes and Hurry showed that teaching about morphology affected children’s writing by improving their spelling (Hurry et al., 2005; Nunes et al., 2006; Nunes, Bryant, & Olsson, 2003;

Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997; Nunes & Bryant, 2011). For example, compared with control groups, 9-11 year-old children improved their use of apostrophes (Bryant, Devine, Ledward, & Nunes, 2002), and 7-8 year-olds spelt better (Nunes et al., 2003). Their main point is:

20 an important, though shockingly neglected, fact that one of the best ways

to help children become experts in their reading and spelling is to make

sure they are thoroughly familiar with the morphemic system in their

own language (Nunes et al., 2006:3).

A second weakness in the report’s conclusions is that it explicitly excludes

from ‘grammar teaching’ the one method for teaching about syntax which is

generally accepted as effective in improving writing: sentence combining. As

explained earlier, sentence combining is an activity for pupils in which they

combine a number of simple sentences into a single larger one. A separate

review by the same team is devoted to sentence combining and concludes

 Sentence combining is an effective means of improving the syntactic

maturity of students in written English between the ages of 5 and 16.

 In the most reliable studies, immediate post-test effects were seen to be

positive, with some tempering of the effect in delayed post-tests. (Andrews

et al., 2004b).

Other surveys have reached the same positive conclusion about sentence

combining (Hillocks et al., 1986; Hillocks, 2003; Graham & Perin, 2007b).

But why does this activity not count as grammar instruction? It is explicitly focused on formal patterning, and there is no reason to doubt that the options available could be articulated in technical terms, even if that is not an essential part of the activity; indeed, it seems likely that the use of metalanguage would increase the benefits of the activity. Moreover, there is no suggestion that it is only done ‘in context’, in reaction to particular issues in the students’ own

21 writing, so it is a clear example of teaching grammar, rather than applying grammar. As a challenging activity likely to raise important grammatical issues, it is an excellent candidate for any collection of methods for teaching grammar; so teaching grammar it certainly is.

A third weakness in the report’s negative conclusions about grammar

teaching cannot be blamed on the report’s authors, but is probably the most

telling: since the report was written (in 2004), an important research

project by Myhill and her colleagues at Exeter has demonstrated that explicit

instruction in grammar does, in fact, improve students’ writing (Jones,

Myhill, & Bailey, 2013; Myhill, Jones, & Watson, 2013; Myhill, Jones, Watson,

& Lines, 2013; Myhill, Jones, Lines, & Watson, 2012). In contrast with all the

earlier projects, Myhill’s intervention was focused on specific grammatical

patterns such as modal verbs, and (in terms of our third model above) it

applied the taught grammar directly to writing tasks. In contrast with all

previous experimental investigations, later tests showed a very strong

positive effect on writing. The strong effect is all the more remarkable for

the fact that neither the students nor the teachers knew much grammar

before the intervention started, so teaching grammar had to start from

scratch. In terms of our earlier theoretical models, Myhill has discovered

that teaching grammar does indeed improve writing, provided that the

grammar is also applied.

In conclusion, although the research since the 1960s has shown that it is possible to teach grammar in such a way that it has no effect on writing, we now know that, given the right focus and methods, grammar instruction can have clear benefits for writing.

22 Further research

For too long, research in the area of grammatical instruction for writing has been driven by the hope that it was not necessary. As explained earlier , the twentieth century saw grammar downgraded not only in schools, but also in universities where the lack of research led to a lack of teaching and several generations of under-trained and under-supported grammar teachers. Since the 1960s grammar has turned into a hot topic for academic research; but by the 1960s many school teachers were sick of teaching this apparently pointless and difficult subject, so they welcomed research evidence that seemed to solve the problem at a stroke. Now that the pendulum is swinging back towards more grammar teaching, it is easy to identify yawning gaps in the research that should underpin it.

The most general gap concerns research in countries other than the

anglophone ‘triangle’ of the UK, the USA and Australia. As explained earlier,

there are many European countries (and their ex-colonial dependents)

where the teaching of grammar was never interrupted (as it was in the

anglophone countries) and is still an important part of the school

curriculum. Some of these countries have very successful programes in the

teaching of grammar, as exemplified above by the Czech Republic, but we

simply do not know what research, if any, has been carried out on the effects

of this teaching on writing (or on any other skills). Almost as important is

our ignorance of research in related areas of education, and in particular

research on foreign-language teaching (including English as a foreign

language), where the consensus has also shifted in favour of explicit

teaching through grammar (Ellis, 2008b). Rather obviously, if the teacher of

23 first-language literacy and the foreign-language teacher both apply grammar, the case for systematic grammar teaching is overwhelming and it is essential for the two to support each other.

More specific research gaps correspond to most of the issues listed in the first section:

 Why should grammar be taught? Although we now know that it can benefit writing, we still don’t know its other benefits, such as its effect on reading (but see Chipere, 2003) or on general cognitive development.

 When should grammar be taught? The practice of other countries shows that some grammar can be taught to young primary children, but at what age should the various parts of grammar be introduced?

 How should grammar be taught? What are the most successful pedagogies for the teaching of grammar? For example, is there a role for diagramming systems and other kinds of special grammatical notation? And how can teachers expand and consolidate their own limited knowledge of grammar?

 What grammar should be taught? Which grammatical constructions should be explained, and at what age? Are some kinds of grammatical analysis better than others for use in schools?

 Who should teach grammar? Even if grammar is initially taught by the teacher of writing, it will also be used (and reinforced) by foreign-language teachers. But, paradoxically, it is the latter who may well know more grammar, so collaboration may help both parties at a time when teachers are struggling to upgrade their own knowledge of grammar.

24 In the words of an earlier review of these issues, “the debate clearly needs to

be recast, and the research agenda also” (Locke, 2009).

Implications for instruction

The present state of research shows that applying grammar is not, after all, a waste of time in the teaching of writing. But this is only true if the teaching is clearly focused on growth-points in the children’s grammar. These points may involve low-level transcription skills of writing such as spelling, or higher-level composition skills such as reviewing the ordering of elements or choosing how much detail to provide. In almost every case, writers have to make grammatical analyses and grammatical choices, and the more understanding they bring to bear on these analyses and choices, the better. But the research shows that it is not enough to teach the grammatical system; if this teaching is to affect writing, then it must be explicitly applied to writing.

A more theoretical conclusion for instruction is that the teaching of

grammar can, and should, be separated from the application of grammar.

For example, the teacher should be able to apply terms and concepts such as

‘relative clause’ or ‘modal verb’ for which pupils already have the deep

understanding that can only come from systematic teaching; and the terms

are just as relevant for reading and foreign-language teaching as they are for

the teaching of writing.

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