Grammatical Gallimaufries

Grammar is amazing. It's complex, fascinating, and a core part of what makes us distinctively human. It’s also a critical communicative resource; something each and every one of us draws on to help us do what language does: make meaning. That's true whether the particular piece of meaning at hand is Paradise Lost, a 140 character rant, or a few sweet nothings.

So it might seem odd to hear that I wouldn't be all that devastated were grammar to be removed from its current place within the National Curriculum for England. I'd be disappointed, of course, and I'd think it a mistake. But then it’s not for me to decide an education system. That, rightly, is a collective discussion; something to be decided as a society. And if the outcome is grammar be gone, then grammar be gone.

Supposing we are going to have that discussion, though, it's important to be clear about just what is being claimed. This is all the more so given recent reporting on the statutory grammar tests (see here and here). There's a lot to be said about these tests, much of it negative and much of it providing grounds for junking them tout court. But it would be wrong to leap from this to the conclusion that we should junk grammar (or even the principle of grammar testing) altogether.

To see why, consider that there are at least two reasons why we might want students to learn about grammar. The first, call it the grammar-for-communication approach, argues that grammar helps students become better language users. The second, the grammar-for-grammar approach argues grammar to be its own reward; that is, students should be taught grammar because we as a society feel it is something students are entitled to know about. Both reasons are legitimate on their own terms. After all, who would argue against teaching something that makes for better readers and writers? And who would argue against teaching something because it is so central to who we are as human beings?

Crucially, however, they are also distinct reasons, with distinct implications for the classroom. For example, if it's grammar-for-grammar that you're after then some formal grammar lessons are perfectly appropriate. On the other hand, if it's grammar-for-communication that you're after, formal grammar lessons simply won't do; at least, not by themselves. This is actually something we've known for a long time, with the available research clearly showing the communicative benefits of formal grammar teaching to be negligible at best. Instead, what we need are lessons that show how particular grammatical features can be used to achieve particular effects. Lessons, in other words, that treat grammar as a literary tool, no different from all the other common-or-garden tools that we take for granted: simile, metaphor, alliteration, &c.

Given such distinctions, it is clearly important for an education system to match its particular rationale for grammar teaching with the kind of grammar teaching that it actually ends up emphasising. And it is primarily for this reason that many think the current grammar tests are so problematic: in effect, despite the curriculum explicitly claiming a grammar-for-communication rationale, the tests have ended up emphasising a grammar-for-grammar model of teaching. This isn't, of course, to claim that the current tests couldn't be improved on their own terms. It is simply to point out that, for the tests to really make sense, they should be designed in such a way that they connect with the underlying rationale for teaching grammar in the first place. Or, to put it another way, rejecting the current grammar tests in no way entails a rejection of grammar teaching altogether. That would be to mistake an overarching rationale for something with the kind of practice that a particular test ends up mandating. And these just aren’t the same thing.

Perhaps most importantly, however, this distinction also allow us to highlight the hollowness of a particularly common objection to grammar teaching. This objection essentially sees grammar teaching as at best a distraction, at worst a stifling chore that almost wilfully stops students becoming better users of English. Such an objection ultimately only goes through because it puts a grammar-for-grammar model of teaching up against a grammar-for-communication rationale; and finds the former wanting. That's correct, as far as it goes. But there really is no reason to assume that formal grammar is the only way that grammar can be taught, and every reason to see grammar as something that can be taught as a means for helping students develop their communicative skills.

After all, that's a substantial part of what grammar is, a communicative resource that we all draw on to help us do what language does: make meaning. And, at its best, it constitutes a sophisticated literary device that can be manipulated to subtle rhetorical ends. Take, for example, the two versions of the same sentence below (the second of which is the original wording as it appears in the book from which its drawn – Karen Wallace & Mike Bostock’s wonderful Think of an Eel):

Version One: He swims like a mad thing into the river.

Version Two:  Into the river, he swims like a mad thing.

While both sentences express more-or-less the same content, their rhetorical effects are clearly distinct. In particular, version two is by far the more striking, directly evoking the eel’s vital, bursting energy, written as if to throw the reader into the water along with the mad eel. The difference, of course, is achieved by a relatively minor shift – the mere positioning of three words. And yet, this difference is not only crucial to the effect, it is crucially grammatical in nature. Specifically, it involves the placement of a prepositional phrase (“into the river”) at the beginning rather than the end of the sentence, where it functions as a fronted adverbial. In other words, the author has achieved their intended effect by targeting the grammatical structure of the sentence. Or, to put it another way, where you put your adverbial preposition phrases really can matter.

And if the grammatical structure of a piece of writing can genuinely play a crucial role in achieving specific communicative effects, then there is no reason why students shouldn’t be taught to develop the sorts of grammatical insights that would further enable them to become the best readers and writers and speakers and listeners they can. Indeed, it is this basic claim that motivates our own approach to grammar education at Exeter’s Graduate School of Education. Not that we are alone – valuable, productive research and training is also being conducted in this area by our colleagues at the Survey of English Usage, for instance. We all have a long way to go, of course, but the basic insight is sound and usually well received by those who matter most – the students and the teachers.

So by all means debate grammar, for all its goods and ills. But don't reduce grammar to a mythical boogeyman. And be sure to pay close attention to what someone is claiming about grammar and why they are claiming it. As any good grammarian will tell you: it's always a mistake to confuse form and function.