Craig,
Thank you for this. It is very good. I do have a question about the last
sentence in 5: Particularly important is the role of conscious knowledge
in acquisition of structures and rhetorical options more common to
writing than reading.
Did you mean "more common to writing than to reading" or "more common to
writing than to speaking"? The latter makes more sense to me.
Edith Wollin
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 5:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: rationale for teaching grammar
Two areas of recent discussion--the official NCTE position and the
relative importance of explicit versus unconscious knowledge--were
addressed in our draft position on rationale, worked out on the NPG list
and presented at the ATEG conference. I am folding it in here in the
hopes that we can embrace or amend it as seems appropriate. The first
point attempts to directly address NCTE's still official position.The
early draft was much harsher than this version, but I think the critique
is still very much in place.
Craig
Rationale for Teaching Grammar
1) Response to NCTE.
The Hillocks' report on Research On Teaching Composition, the
foundation for NCTE's current anti-grammar position, is now twenty years
old and out of touch with recent shifts in our understanding of grammar,
notably functional, rhetorical, and cognitive approaches.
The usefulness for teaching grammar was measured in very narrow terms,
reduction in writing "errors" over short term. Grammar teaching was
deemed "harmful' primarily because it pulled instruction time away from
reading and writing, which were a priori labeled "higher order
concerns." Little attention was paid to the possibility that grammar can
mean many things, that reducing any activity to "avoidance of error" is
fundamentally reductive, or that school-based traditional grammar of the
time was not a particularly accurate description of the language.
Particular damage was done by presenting these conclusions as
definitive, when, in fact, they were simply reporting the
ineffectiveness of teaching a faulty or impractical understanding of
language when measuring short term growth on controlled, holistically
assessed writing samples. For a sympathetic consideration of the
context for these mistakes here and in England, see Hudson (2005) and
Kolln and Hancock (2005). One result has been a progressive loss of
knowledge about grammar within the field. We have also seen re-emergence
of regressive practices to fill the void of no instruction.
Professionals have continued to avoid reconsideration of grammar in part
because they have insufficient knowledge to draw on.
2) People who have considerable knowledge of grammar seem universally
to find that knowledge valuable, not just in specialist enterprises, but
in everyday language interactions, in reading, in forming/revising their
own writing, and in helping others. That knowing about grammar is
valuable but teaching of grammar is not seems counter-intuitive.
3) It may very well be that any "higher order concern" is not easily
addressed in short term spurts. It's a solid truism in writing
instruction that growth in writing is not adequately tested within a
semester. The same is roughly true for reading; many students who take a
post test after a half year or year will score lower on the follow-up
test, which would seem to be saying that they have been harmed by the
instruction. Even indications of growth are often within the margin of
error for the test. This has been rightly attributed to weaknesses in
the tests as measures of long-term progress and long-term growth. It's
hard to measure short term, for example, the extent or usefulness of a
student being engaged by writing or reading. It may very well be that
knowledge about language shows its value over longer periods of time,
especially when the focus is not on teaching to a narrowly focused test,
but on cultivating maturation of the student. Students may experience
periods of awkwardness as they try out the new rhetorical tools that a
rich exploration of grammar brings to the fore.
4) Animosity toward grammar is connected to a narrow and distorted view
of what grammar is about. For most people, it is a catalogue of
constraints that language needs to conform to in more formal registers.
The progressive anti-grammar position has never questioned that narrow
view and has never tried or succeeded in lessening the burdens of
correctness.
Rather than argue against the validity of these surface "rules", the
argument has been that direct teaching of grammar has little effect on
their reduction. The prevailing view is that they can be addressed "in
context" and with a minimal metalanguage, a minimal need for conscious
understanding. The position fails on three counts. It fails to replace
or diminish a fixation on "error". It fails to provide the complex
understanding necessary for a dialogue about error "in context" to be
useful. And it fails to acknowledge the rich role of grammar in carrying
out the work of discourse, in building purposeful and effective writing.
5) The question of whether knowledge of grammar is useful is best
understood as a question about knowledge about language. Language can
be acquired naturally in language rich environments, but that does not
mean that reflection on language is not natural or valuable or that
cultural knowledge about language should not be valued and passed on.
Students come to school with a rich language already acquired, but they
do not know the conventions of standard English, do not know how to use
their own natural grammar as rhetorical resource in critical reading and
writing, and have not yet acquired the language or conventions typical
of the academic disciplines. Particularly important is the role of
conscious knowledge in acquisition of structures and rhetorical options
more common to writing than reading.
6) A much better measure of what it means to teach grammar "in context"
is looking at the work of grammar when grammar is working well,
especially in contexts the student has yet to master. Grammar is a
natural and inevitable component of all languages, one that would be
there with or without our awareness of it, one that makes meaning
possible. Words are not words apart from their grammatical functions.
When language is working well, the role of grammar is below
consciousness. But grammar is best understood in precisely these
situations, when it contributes smoothly to the clarity and
thoughtfulness of effective discourse. "Error in context" is not a true
context approach to grammar.
7) Modern linguistics is not a unified or uncontentious field, but
solid insights are available from rhetorical, functional, and cognitive
perspectives. We are beginning to collect a solid body of approaches
that aid in interpretive reading and effective writing. Rather than a
set of limiting constraints, grammar can be thought of as a
meaning-making resource. It can be incorporated into the "higher order"
activities of reading and writing as an enormously useful adjunct toward
their goals.
It is also worth studying in its own right as central to language, to
our most communal resource as members of human communities.
7) State standards universally call for mastery of writing conventions
and fluency with more formal discourse, but they do not present a
reasonable path to accomplish those goals. Official opposition to the
teaching of grammar has not changed the demands, but has simply asserted
that these achievements cannot be taught directly. We believe that every
student has the right to achieve mastery and the right to have the
notion of mastery articulated as clearly as possible. We believe that
curriculum should be structured with the assumption that mastery is
possible for all students, not just a talented few.
8) People knowledgeable about language are much more likely to see
dialect forms as rule-driven, as nonstandard rather than incorrect, much
less likely to see them as indicative of the abilities of the speaker.
Ignorance about language creates a climate in which myths about language
and language prejudice can flourish and grow.
9) We believe that any student graduating from a public school system
should have spent a considerable amount of time studying language,
including the grammar of his/her native language and its role in the
making of meaning.
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