Grammar

Godley, A. J., Carpenter, B. D., & Werner, C. A. (2007). "I'll speak in proper slang": Language ideologies in a daily editing activity. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(1), 100-131.

Author: Amanda J. Godly, Ph. D. in Language, Literacy and Culture – UC Berkely (2000). University of Pittsburgh, departments of: Instruction and Learning; Language, Literacy, and Culture; and English and Communications Education. Recent work with A. Escher and presentations/publications on Bidialectical African American adolescents’ code-switching. Thinking about intercultural communications. agodley@pitt.edu

            Brian D. Carpenter – Instructor at the English Language Institute at the University of Pittsburgh.

            Cynthia A. Werner – 10^th-grade English teacher, Wexford, PA

Date: 2007 – renewed emphasis in grammar assessment as part of NCLB and the new writing portion of the SAT (2006)

Research Questions: p. 42: (1) How do the state standards, state assessments, and official curriculum surrounding the Daily Language Practice represent particular language ideologies? (2) How are these languages ideologies reflected in the patterns and structure of the classroom discourse surrounding Daily Language Practice? (3) How are language ideologies expressed and contested through teacher and student talk during the Daily Language Practice? (4) How did the Daily Language Practice shape students’ understanding of the grammar and conventions of written Standard English, particularly as reflected in beginning- and end-of-the-year assessments?

Context (need for study): Gap in empirical studies of grammar instruction in ELA research, and explicit grammar instruction is now part of the norm – likely because of what is included in high-stakes testing (p. 103).

Methods: Yearlong ethnographic study in 3 urban, mostly Black, 10-th grade English classes that use Daily Oral Language (Daily Language Practice). 31/55 enrolled, 30/31 are Black. Two university researchers and the 20-year-veteran classroom teacher analyzed language ideologies together. Classroom discourse analysis, coded for contend and meaning. Page107 describes “ethnography of communication” (Duff, 2002; Saville-Troike, 1989) as focusing on “(a) what is considered appropriate communication in a particular context, (b) oral communication and social interaction as critical sites of learning, and (c) ‘the ecologies of language learning, socialization and use’ (Duff, p. 292).”

Findings: DLP  emphasizes the solitary correctness of written Standard English, offering limited ways to learn about and build off of existing language resources.

            Students see space as important in forming grammarian-selves – when student was prompted to correct spoken grammar, their response was that they were not at the board where they do the grammar changes.

Discussion (my connection): DLP emphasizes a language of power that cannot be ignored. The tests and scores that link to it are backed by the almighty dollar. Schools in which cultures of obedience and adherence to Standard English (especially seen as “our way”) are likely to keep up the daily grammar instruction, seeing it as a building block rather than part of an essence.  As long as the real possibilities of prestigious jobs, colleges, and scholarships are desired by this group of families, students are going to take the mechanics of this seriously enough – because this is what drives standard curriculum then teachers then interaction in the room. It seems like an ugly cycle to me.

Hartwell, P. (1985). Grammar, grammars, and the teaching of grammar. College English, 47(2), 105-127.

Author: Patrick Hartwell, Ph.D, Professor Emeritus of English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Died in October of 2000. Central figure in recognizing the ineffectiveness of grammar instruction as a way to learn to write.  A major writing textbook: Open to Language (1982),  was widely used in college writing courses. Also had work on literacy learning influenced by dialect inference. http://www.ou.edu/hartwell/

Date: 1985 – Reagan is president., politically in times of a “literacy crisis” – war on drugs/illiteracy

Research Questions: 1) Why is the grammar issue so important? Why has it been the dominant focus of composition research for the last seventy-five [add 30 to that] years?

            2) What definitions of the word grammar are needed to articulate the grammar issue intelligibly?

            3) What do findings in cognate disciplines suggest about the value of formal grammar instruction?

            4) What is our theory of language, and what does it predict about the value of formal grammar instruction? (This question—“what does our theory of language predict?”—seems a much more powerful question than “what does educational research tell us?”) (p. 108)

Context (need for study): The fors and againsts are both coming at grammar instruction with positivistic ideals – experimenting to find value in formal grammar instruction. The question “What does research tell us?” calls for more experiments that continue to “tell us nothing”. Page 107, Chomsky (1975) criticizes “the trivialization of human learning by behavioral psychologists” and, in effect, experimentation.

Methods: Researched essay

Findings:  Those who value grammar instruction think in sequences and skill sets, but those who do not think in terms of complex interactions. Usage is different than grammar, but Francis didn’t separate them (p. 109).

            In Kolln’s “Closing the Books on Alchemy” (p. 140) – an article in which the anti-grammarian is characterized as the alchemist – grammar is “the internalized system of rules that speakers of a language share,” and Hartwell calls it “the grammar in our heads” (p. 111).

            Conveying larger meaning (Grammar 1) is NOT dependent upon control of the science of formal language patterns (Grammar 2). Francis Christiensen provided an analogy of a centipede thinking deeply about the movement of each of its legs to formal grammar study in 1962.

           

            Krashen (1982) identifies a  hierarchy of rules that  get taught, that are known to different levels of authority, and ultimately the “rules of English”. The inner circle of what is taught in schools is Grammar 4 – the common school grammars. Grammar 5 is stylistic.

            Herbert W. Seliger (1979) found no correlation between ability to state the rule and the ability to apply it correctly (119).

            “If we think seriously about error and its relationship to the worship of formal grammar study, we need to attempt some massive dislocation of our traditional thinking, to shuck off our hyperliterate perception of the value of formal rules, and to regain the confidence in the tacit power of unconscious knowledge that our theory of language gives us” (p. 121).

            People reading aloud will self-correct written errors (p. 121).

            Thinking through this analysis “makes the question of socially nonstandard dialects....into a non-issue” and “forces us to posit multiple literacies, used for multiple purposes, rather than a single static literacy, engraved in ‘rules of grammar” (p. 123).

            Doing away with formal grammar instruction takes power from the teacher and hands it to the students.

Discussion (my connection): The idea of an internal, natural grammar, seems so patronizing to me. To say that the natural way is the way that English speakers (not the argument, but I think it is implied) order words or even make plurals as “untaught” beings is careless. To find an untaught person, you would have to make sure that they were never talked to before the experiment – even while in utero , which would keep them from  fulfilling the requirements.

            On page 115,  James Britton’s analogy of forcing starving people to learn to use a knife and fork before eating makes me think, personally of the Gospel of Christ. The message is not change in order to be forgiven. Grace has no prerequisite for the receivers. I truly believe that education should be seen as an act of grace – not on a spiritual level, but affording students an opportunity of full realization.

            Seliger’s findings are the TRUTH – I had students who knew all sorts of rules and could identify “mistakes” in grammar study but did not appropriate them into their writing.

            I quite enjoy the idea of developing writing skills on two levels: rhetorically for meaningful contexts, and broadly for conscious manipulation of form. The second would seem to ask for some grammar instruction, but it is the second. It is beautifying rather than foundational.

Lefstein, A. (2009). Rhetorical grammar and the grammar of schooling: Teaching “powerful verbs” in the english national literacy strategy. Linguistics and Education, 20(4), 378-400. 

Author: Adam Lefstein, Ph. D. from King’s College London (2005), Department of Education at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Research on interaction/intersection of policy, pedagogy, and classroom events. Looks at the changes in patterns of teaching: dialogic teaching, video for purposes of professional development. http://bgu.academia.edu/AdamLefstein

Date: 2009 – still heavy in standardized testing. Grammar seems to be the thing you can teach rules to most in writing instruction – similar to formulas you need for the math portions of the tests.

Research Questions: What is the “current English policy regarding the teaching of grammar in primary schools, and its enactment in a Year 3 (8-year olds) literacy lesson”?

Context (need for study): Curricular policy proposes rhetorical approach to grammar instruction, but active teaching is formal and rule-based. Defining grammar as broad “study of language patterns and structure” (p. 379). In England.

Methods: Policy research and extended case study (Burawoy, 1998; Mitchell, 1983).  Year 3 in one primary school during 2004-04 school year, including : “participant observation in the school, formal and informal interviews, audio-recording of lessons, and individual and group feedback conversations” (p. 383).

Findings: The “grammars” of schooling (Tyack & Tobin, 1994) and educational accountability keeps participation of rhetorical grammar teaching at bay.

            “Rules are typically taught through teacher transmission, whole class recitation, and individual pupil practice on grammar exercises” (p. 379). Rhetorical grammar is full of choices to be used as tools, not the rule-based correct and incorrect divisions (p. 380).

           

            Rule-based grammar does not trust the individual as a knowledge-holder.

            Progressivists see grammar as “largely irrelevant, boring and a constraint on pupil expression,” alienating the working class (p. 381).

            New Grammar Teaching (Carter, 1991) came out of knowledge about language (KAL) as a sort of middle ground (Cox, 1995, p. 20).: language study integrated into real contexts; built on prior knowledge and experience; understanding of language as power and representative of values; coming from professional knowledge of teachers; and the interestingness of language craves study.

            1998 – New Labour government sought to reform primary literacy education with National Literacy Strategy. Tied to testing and “accountability” through publishing school results.

            Teacher identified target issues, probably as part of NLS suggestions on writing targets. Instruction turns mechanical: find, compare, replace. Students are looking to get right answers, not even considering the rhetorical, the power issues of word choice. Synonyms are not different words with the same meaning. Making a replacement can change the power connotation either higher or lower.

            Students are drawn to making replacements with long or obscure words.

           

Discussion (my connection):

            I know that my grandfather wonders about what I do in school. When we talk, he remarks about  how students don’t diagram sentences anymore, that people don’t study the way they used to. This shows how valued this kind of study was when he went through school, how much we see that the way we were taught was best. This idea of going back to basics is quite classist and nationalistic – languagist?

            Again, not everything we learn is done in building block mode. Can’t we accomplish things in education without having to build a pyramid each time? Language has to be more ethereal than that.

            It is so interesting that we spend so much time trying to get different words for students to use, especially with “said” or “walked” – certainly there is a difference when “whispered” or “sauntered” but said and walked are often what people mean. Is it all a trick?

            Even if the teacher doesn’t focus on grammar rules and the exactness of essentialst grammarians, the practice of the students seems to lead that way. Mechanical work is the lowest common denominator.

            Oh, the vacuum of schooling. How tough it seems to be to have genuine experiences with language that are not contrived or even forced upon the students!