Mary Jo,
Last February, I asked a similar question to this group and received some terrific responses from John Alexander, Craig Hancock, Lee Davis, Scott Woods and Edward Vavra. I'm including my original question and their responses below. I hope these help you with your research as much as they have helped me.
Dave Kehe
On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 4:26 PM, David Kehe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Recently, I've heard a number of college English composition instructors say, "Research shows that teaching students grammar does not improve their writing." Do any of you know if this is commonly accepted "research" in English departments? Do any of you know if there is research that shows the opposite, i.e., that explicit grammar instruction can help students improve their writing skills? I would greatly appreciate any insights that you might have.
>
> Dave Kehe
Subject: Re: Does teaching grammar improve writing?
Ed Vavra has some very interesting and useful discussion of this topic on his KISS Grammar website. He looks at the Braddock and Hillocks reports (and a few others, as I recall) and rips them apart pretty handily.
Scott Woods
Subject: Re: Does teaching grammar improve writing?
Since Scott mentioned it, See:
http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/KISSMS/ToC.htm <http://vendovi.ctc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/KISSMS/ToC.htm>
This is the manuscript that NCTE rejected.
For the research see chapter 2: http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/KISSMS/Chapt_2.htm <http://vendovi.ctc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://home.pct.edu/~evavra/KISSMS/Chapt_2.htm>
Ed V.
Subject: Re: Does teaching grammar improve writing?
Martha briefly critiques the Harris and Elley studies and the Braddock and Hillocks reports in the following article.
Rhetorical Grammar: A Modification Lesson
Martha Kolln
The English Journal, Vol. 85, No. 7, The Great Debate (Again): Teaching Grammar and Usage, (Nov., 1996), pp. 25-31 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Also see Martha Kolln's artice in CCC:
College Composition and Communication, Vol. 34, No. 4, Coherence and Cohesion: What Are They and How Are They Achieved? (Dec., 1983), pp. 496-500 (article consists of 5 pages)
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Martha and I also give an overview of this in a Dec. 2005 co-authored
article in English Teaching: Practice and Critique. ("The Story of
English Grammar in United States Schools") The issue is available for
free online. Just google the journal title. That whole issue was
devoted to articles reacting to-- Hudson, R., & Walmsley, J. (2005).
The English patient: English grammar and teaching in the twentieth
century, Journal of Linguistics, 41 (3), 593-622--looking at why
there's such a gap between linguistics and English teaching in England.
Check out Debra Myhill's article while you're there. "Ways of Knowing:
Writing with Grammar in Mind" English Teaching: Practice and Critique
December, 2005, volume 4, number 3 pp. 77-96
Martha and I are rewritting our article by invitation for an anthology
of international articles that should be out later in the year.
(Rutledge.)
I also recommend MacDonald, Susan Peck. (2007). The Erasure of
Language. College Composition and Communication. 58 (4), 585-625.
I sometimes summarize the findings this way. Only very controlled
studies were deemed acceptable. All were short-term, in part for that
reason. Typically, Some students were taught grammar, others were asked
to practice writing, and both were scored on holistically assessed
writing samples at the end. Since the students who practiced writing
wrote better than the students who studied grammar, it was deemed
unproductive to teach grammar. The Braddock study went even farther by
saying it may be "harmful" to teach grammar because it pulls students
away from more productive activity.
There's no way to call judgements like this conclusive. (Silly comes to
mind for me, but I see it through a different lens.)
It's interesting that the people who say we shouldn't teach grammar
aren't ready to say that students shouldn't write "correctly", so
current practice is to do so "in the context of writing" with as little
metalanguage as possible. (Knowledge about language is not a goal.)
They begin to build the necessary knowledge from that end, at least in
theory, but it's not very systematic.
Here are a few useful quotes from Myhill:
The rejection of decontextualised, and with it by implication,
prescriptive, grammar teaching was rooted in insightful critique of what
was happening in English classrooms. In contrast, the "grammar in
context" principle is both less sharply critiqued and considerably less
clearly conceptualised. There has been little genuine discussion or
consideration of what "in context" means. Frequently, observations of
classroom practice indicate that the notion of "in context" means little
more than grammar teaching which is slotted into English lessons, where
the focus is not grammar, but some other feature of English learning.
(82)
There is also a danger of psuedo-contextualisation, where separate,
discreet grammar lessons are replaced by "mini" grammar lessons in the
midst of something else. (82)
What would be so much more interesting, and valuable, would be to explore
in more subtly nuanced detail what research can tell us about what aspects
of grammar and knowledge about language are most relevant to writing,
whether direct teaching of these features can help children improve their
writing, and what teaching strategies are most successful in enabling this
to happen. (80)
Craig
Subject: Re: Does teaching grammar improve writing?
Hi David!
If I remember correctly, Tim Hadley, who is a member of this list and the
editor of the *ATEG Journal*, has tackled this issue in the past and wrote a
literal dissertation on it (Tim, I hope I'm not off the mark here). You may
try searching the listserv archives (found via link on the ATEG site) for
previous posts from him as well as others. I can't remember if there has
been a journal issue devoted to this or not, but it would certainly make
sense if there were.
Here are two of the oft-quoted, "classic" works that are anti-grammar:
Braddock, R., R. Lloyd-Jones, and L. Schoer. Research in Written
Composition. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1963.
Hillocks, G. Research on written composition. Urbana, IL: ERIC Clearing
House on Reading and Communication Skills, 1986.
However, I've heard both of these studies soundly debunked.
I would suggest Richard Hudson's article that appeared in an issue of *Syntax
in the Schools* (formerly the ATEG journal) and that is now reprinted on the
web. It has some good references for pro-grammar research as well as some
discussion of the older anti-grammar stuff:
http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/writing.htm <http://vendovi.ctc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/writing.htm>
Hope this helps!
Regards,
John Alexander
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Mary Jo Napholz
Sent: Thu 8/27/2009 9:02 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Value of teaching grammar
Erin, I find your comments on teaching grammar to be accurate. As a public school teacher who teaches grammar, I have started doing an inquiry as a result of being part of the National Writing Project. Most of my peers teach no grammar. In my research, I have found support for excluding grammar except when responding to student's writing. Many authors are adamant that teaching grammar in isolation does not transfer to skills in writing. Do you know of research that opposes this position? Would like to include it in my research. Anyone else like to weigh in? I have convinced my local peers to do more formal grammar instruction. Any ideas on tracking if this is successful would be appreciated.
-----Original Message-----
From: Erin Karl <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Thu, Aug 27, 2009 9:15 am
Subject: Re: Totally OFF TOPIC ATEG
Well, I feel the need to weigh in here a little. My mother and I own a company which sells her grammar curriculum to homeschoolers and private and charter schools. We'd love to sell public schools on our materials, but you're correct that most public schools don't feel the need to teach it. In fact in 1981, my mother was told by her department ch airs that "research proved" you don't have to teach it. They refused to buy her the grammar textbooks she wanted. She decided to begin writing her own and that's is what brought us here. Our program is very thorough: parsing, diagraming, mechanics. What is amazing is that there are a number of programs which are even MORE thorough ... to the point of teaching stuff only people on this list need to know! ;-)
When my mom started selling her curriculum, she can from a place (public school) where people looked at her like she had three heads for thinking it necessary to cover grammar to a mastery level. It was funny to see that when she began selling her curriculum to homeschoolers that changed. Now we're looked at like we have three heads for telling people they can wait until 4th or 5th grade, teach the entire body of knowledge in middle school and simply reinforce in high school. Homeschool parents are used to doing grammar every day, all year long, from about 2nd through12th grade!
The average cost of homeschooling, per child, is about $600-$800 a year. FAR less than private or public school. This is a link to an article about recent studies done on homeschooling academic achievement.
http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/200908100.asp
The number of homeschoolers goes up every year. We've noticed a big jump this year since parents who previously both worked an d sent their children to private school are choosing to homeschool when one parent gets laid off.
One of the statistics I find VERY interesting is that there is almost NO minority gap amongst homeschoolers. This is due in part to the parents who choose to take on homeschooling their kids, but it PROVES that any person of any background can be academically successful.
http://www.hslda.org/docs/study/ray1997/08.asp
Anyway ... just thought I'd share! ;-)
Erin Karl
Analytical Grammar
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