The brief summary of the relevant research and conclusion you provided, 
Bill, is both enlightening and extremely useful.   Thanks.

I wonder if you could add a little on the chronology and the curricula of 
the period.

When was it the stated official belief that the teaching of grammar would 
lead to improvement in writing ability and were there any research findings 
to support the assumption.  I would have thought that it was pretty obvious 
that one should not expect a direct effect on composition writing ability of 
teaching a course of grammar.   I would expect the only useful grammar 
teaching to do would be that based on tackling common errors made in essay 
writing by the student population involved.

Were there in the 60s compilations of common composition errors and were 
they part of the composition curriculum?

You say teachers ended up neglecting composition writing because of an 
over-emphasis on grammar.   Does this mean that there were no actual 
composition classes?  Or does it mean that there were but that teachers did 
not follow the curriculum, preferring to teach grammar when they should have 
been teaching composition?

Ron Sheen



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "William McCleary" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 4:15 PM
Subject: Re: The lessons of recent pedagogical history was Rules


> Herb,
>
> I just want to clarify for you what was actually said about the effect of 
> grammar on the teaching of writing. Here is the much misinterpreted 
> statement from
> Research in Writing Composition  by Braddock, Lloyd-Jones and Schoer 
> (NCTE, 1963):
>
> In view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon many 
> types of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and 
> unqualified terms: the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, 
> because it usually displaces some instruction and practice in actual 
> composition, even a harmful effect on the improvement of writing.
>
> Some people seem to read right over the clause after "or." And I can 
> testify from personal experience that the teacher of grammar did displace 
> the teaching of composition. (I started teaching English in 1961) Indeed, 
> at the time we considered the teaching of grammar to be a significant part 
> of teaching composition. We thought that students couldn't understand and 
> correct their errors unless they first learned enough about grammar for us 
> to explain the errors to them. Unfortunately, a lot of teachers spent so 
> much time on grammar that they never got around to teaching composition. 
> It is, after all, a lot easier to correct a grammar quiz than a 
> composition.
>
> I am sorry that so many people interpreted this conclusion by Braddock et 
> al. to mean that grammar shouldn't be taught at all, but if one has to 
> make a choice between grammar and composition, I'd rather see composition 
> be the choice. I'd rather see both included, but that just leads to making 
> of choice of which approach to grammar would be most teachable and most 
> useful. I'm afraid that what we taught in the early sixties was neither 
> teachable or useful for the majority of students. I'm happy to see that 
> you are currently addressing that issue.
>
> Bill
>
> On Oct 13, 2007, at 4:15 AM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>
>> Ron,
>>
>> What you describe in the ESL context in Quebec and Bangalore is the heart 
>> of what motivated the founders of ATEG, the theoretical claims in the 
>> fifties and sixties that the teaching of grammar not only did not help 
>> student writers improve their writing but actually detracted from it. 
>> Composition writers argued that the teaching of grammar was harmful to 
>> the teaching of writing.  NCTE adopted this finding and the training of 
>> teachers in grammar, the place of grammar in K12 language arts curricula, 
>> and, of course, the place of grammar in the writing class all diminished 
>> sharply.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>>
>> Bruce raises an interesting issue which all teachers have to confront 
>> from
>> time to time.   That is the implementation of an innovation which they 
>> are
>> not necessarily equipped to handle and which they find implicitly entails
>> their rejecting their own teaching prinicples.  This happened in ESL in
>> Quebec and Bangalore, India in the 80s where teachers were forbidden to
>> teach grammar when an extreme form of communicative language teaching was
>> introduced which, by the way, ultimately failed.
>>
>> I wonder whether any members have had experience of this in teaching 
>> English
>> as a first language.
>>
>> Interestingly, in the cases mentioned in the first pargraph, as teachers
>> increasingly lost faith in the innovation, they returned surreptitiously 
>> to
>> their own teaching principles.
>>
>> Ron Sheen
>>
>> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web 
>> interface at:
>>      http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
>> and select "Join or leave the list"
>>
>> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>>
>>
> Bill McCleary
> Livonia, NY
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface 
> at:
>     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ 

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/