I believe Craig's and others' postings on linguists' positions on
grammar learning need a bit of clarification. Linguists' pronouncements
have been made based on the discovery of how much children learn of
their native language before age 5; my personal opinion is that another
factor in these pronouncements is the anti-prescriptive position of
most linguists. There is a further factor -- since speech is the
primary and natural way language manifests itself, the bulk of
linguistics research has been devoted to speech data somewhat to the
neglect of written language. Add to this the clear problems with
"traditional grammar" teaching, and it isn't surprising that linguists
would support an anti-grammar-instruction stance.
It is very important to understand that no child needs instruction to
become completely proficient in the spoken language of his/her home
environment/community. This includes a person's entire life span --
people in oral-only cultures master their languages perfectly. Often,
of course, their native language is not the dialect preferred by the
gatekeeping institutions of society. Such children's linguistic
capabilities are therefore misunderstood and they suffer disadvantage
in education for this reason. I have made numerous presentations at
ATEG conferences on this subject, and have also noted that the new
British grammar curriculum is not particularly advanced in this regard,
in a review published in Syntax in the Schools.
Only in societies in which literacy is extremely important is there
this concern about how people learn grammar; what is really meant, of
course, is how people learn the grammar of sophisticated _written_
language and the grammar of the standard dialect of that society. I
certainly believe very strongly that this knowledge is essential to
success in our society, but teachers need to realize that this is a
special kind of language which children can learn starting from the
base of their oral capabilities (see work by Pam Dykstra on this
subject).
I also believe that the mental capacity that allows children to acquire
grammar subconsciously is a powerful force in the learning of
written-language grammar. I don't know of studies to support this, but
I suspect that generous reading of age-appropriate formal grammar in
texts allows children to naturally absorb complex sentence structures
and formal rules that have all but disappeared from the spoken language
(such as "whom" rules). I really am not sure to what extent explicit
grammar instruction is needed as a supplement to this automatic
learning. I do believe that conscious knowledge of grammar is essential
in giving people a vocabulary and set of concepts they can use to _talk
about_ writing and language in general. It may also help with improving
students' writing. But have there been studies of school programs which
produce very good writers without explicit grammar instruction, but
which also include a rigorous reading program? My hunch would be that
schools with great reading programs probably also teach grammar, making
the likely causes difficult to separate. But again, I am not very
well-acquainted with research in this area. If anyone is, I'd
appreciate references.
All this is not to say that I oppose explicit grammar instruction, as
listers familiar with me know well. But we can only understand the
learning process and formulate good teaching methods by (a)
appreciating the strong base in oral grammar that children bring to the
classroom and (b) exploiting to the greatest extent possible children's
innate grammar-learning capacity. I also strongly believe that teaching
approaches which combine grammar with rhetoric and function are
absolutely necessary. The program I've seen that does this well is the
Australian program (or at least one execution of it I saw presented at
a linguistics conference). 1st-graders were working fluently with
grammatical terms, analyzing and composing prose.
Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
Linguistics Minor Advisor
English Department
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel.: 805.756.2184
Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596
Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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