TEACHING GRAMMAR
Irene Philippaki-Warburton
Emeritus Professor in Linguistics
University of Reading
1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to consider two questions: a more specific and a more general one. The more specific question and the one that comes immediately to our mindwhen we speak of grammar, concerns the possible contribution that grammar can make to the teaching and learning of a language. To be more precise the question is whether or not, when we are taught a language,we learn it better, faster and more effectively if we have been given lessons in its grammar?The second question concerns whether and to what extent grammar has a role to play in the cultivation of the student’smind. This is not a question often raised because it is taken for granted that grammar, if needed at all, is used in order to help the student to use the language more correctly, without grammatical errors. If we were to find that grammar has no such practical benefits we will probablyconclude that it has no position in the classroom.
In this article we will be concerned with the teaching of the first language ( i.e., mother tongue) though what we will have to say applies also to second and third languages. I will start from the first issue which concerns the question whether it is possible, through the teaching of grammar to achieve a more correct use of the target language, its morphology and its syntax. In order to be able to evaluate the possible contribution of grammar to the knowledge of the taught language wemust first define what we mean by the terms ‘grammar’ and ‘knowledge of language’. In this article we are interested in the knowledge of grammar independently of the question how it was acquired (i.e., with the teaching of rules, with organised self teaching, using electronic devices or pedagogical books, reference grammars etc).
2. From the Alexandrine Grammariansto the current linguistictheorising.
The term grammar has been used in a number of ways. For most people it usually means rules which teach the students what are the language elements and their correct combinations. The perception that grammar, as a school lesson, aims to present how the nouns of Greek, for example, are declined, what case does the subject of the sentence have etc. has been inherited from the Alexandrine grammarians who created the first grammar. The purpose of that grammar was to help their contemporary scholars who no longer spoke the language of the classical texts, to understand these via some sort of deciphering them as they would be deciphering a foreign language.
Another purpose of such a grammar was to teach the contemporaries but also the future generations what is the correct form of theGreeklanguage. Furthermore, correct was considered to be the originali.e., the one used by Plato, Aristotle etc., a few centuries before. Their works which had been hugely admired could not have beenwritten inany other form of Greek but the best. In this way the grammar that was created consists of a list of forms, rules of combinations, patterns and exceptions. These grammatical descriptions, however,derive from a written language which is no longer spoken and it is outside the experience of children. Thus from the rules extracted from older written texts the children of the Alexandrines had to learn classical Greek as a second language. However we decided to consider the contribution of grammar to the learning/teaching of the first/mother tongue.We must, therefore, turn now our attention to that.
According to the view which has been prevalent in the last 50 years, inspired by the theory of Generative Grammar but also by other linguistic theories the term grammar refers to two closely related meanings. Firstly with the term ‘grammar’ Generative Theory refers primarily to the language competence of the natural speaker, i.e., the subconscious, underlying knowledge of the linguistics system The view that the native speaker has such an internalisedlinguistic system issupported by the fact that the native speaker gradually becomes able to produce and understand an unlimited number of correctly formed sentences which are furthermore appropriate in the given circumstances. In addition the native speaker has the ability to make judgements on the correctness of a sentence and on relationships across constructions. He/she may not know how to explain why some forms are ok and others are not but ashe/she matures linguistically he become more able to also offer explanations, This subconscious knowledge constitutes the grammar of the native speaker.
Second. Generative Grammar but other theories too use the term ‘grammar’ to refer to a formal systemwhich consists of grammatical categories in conjunction with rules and principles on the basis of which syllables, words, phrases and sentences are constructed
Let us now return to the question whether the conscious teaching of grammar in its strict sense as grammatical categories (parts of speech) and the rules of their combinations (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics) helps and improves the use of the grammatically correct expressions. To answer this we must take in to consideration the following. From the amount of difficulties that linguists have encountered in their effort to describe in detail and accuracy the formal characteristics of a language it becomes clear how complicated each grammatical system is. And yet, in spite of this it seems to be acquired by the child fairly quickly independently of the child’s IQ and to a large extent independently of environmental conditions (Chomsky 1965 and elsewhere).
In order to explain this phenomenon the theory of Generative Grammar proposes that the child is born with an innate linguistic structure which becomes activated and enriched by the characteristics of the language of his/her environment. Thusthe acquisition of the native language is accomplished in a natural way and at a young age. We must note that the child has already acquired the basic structures on all levels before going to school. We must add that even if the claim that there is an innate and specific structure which guides the acquisition of the child, is rejected it cannot be denied that the child acquires his language in an indirect way at a very young age without conscious effort and without language specific teaching.
The above observations might lead us to the conclusion that since the child has already acquired his language (i.e., the grammar of his language) before going to school, perhaps there is no reason to teach him grammar in school. I note that grammar is the internalised knowledge and the conscious way of referring to it explicitly. Even if some of the more complex constructions have not been acquired before going to school they will be acquired gradually and again in a natural indirect way.
To be more specific, the child of six or seven years uses correctly the verb tenses, he does not make mistakes in the agreement of person and number, uses correctly the pronouns, the singular and plural of the nouns etc. Moreover the mistakes that the children of 2-6 make are not random but derive from the extension to the applicability of a rule to more cases,from the less regular to the more regular. (Kati 1984, 391, /anevusa/ instead of the correct /anevena/ ‘I was going up’, /kaθαrai/, instead of/kaθarizi/ ‘cleans’.) These mistakes are referred to as ‘developmental mistakes’and they confirm rather than challenge the role of the rules. Such evidencecan lead to the position that there is no reason to teach the rules to the children since it seems that they will learn them by themselves. What the children needare language data and practice.The data are everywhere both in school and outside it.
To the extent that this view of language knowledge and acquisition is correct, and the evidence for it is very strong (Pinker 1994/2000) the natural conclusion may be that the school children do not need grammar in order to learn the mechanism of their mother language. This conclusion may then lead in a natural way to the view that grammar has no position in the school curriculum. This argument has been used by teachers of the 60ies and 70ies in Britain and the USA and it led to the removal of grammar from education.We should also addthat this view was strengthened by the other idea that most children cannot learn grammatical metaglossary and for those who can it is of little value. (Thompson 1969).
A basic argument expressed by some educators was that since the system of the language is naturally acquired by the native speaker, the only thing that the teaching of grammar can offer is a very complicated metalanguage which is useless. Today, however,the perception about the contribution of grammar to language education has been revised. At the same time it is becoming clear that there is a new enthusiasm in favour of the idea that the children must be taught systematically the grammar of their native languagein order to learn and to appreciate its structure and its function. In fact the teaching of grammar now constitutes one of the basic components of thecurriculum. (See Στρατηγικής Εθνικού Γραμματισμού (DfEE1997) και του Εθνικού Αναλυτικού Προγράμματος για το μάθημα των Αγγλικών (DfEE και QCA 1999) (Hudson 2000,1).
One of the reasons which led to the re-evaluation of the role of grammar was the understanding that the lack of grammatical education had led to negative results in the use of language. Another reason was the fact that various studies (Bateman and Zidonis 1966, Elley 1994; Had lederriman 1994, Tomlinson 1994 and others) revealed that the students of secondary education, but also of primary education (Gale 1967),can learn grammar as metalanguage, whether of the more traditional kind or the more modern one when it is taught correctly with the appropriate methods. Hudson (2000,1) mentions that evidence from developmental psychology shows that the understanding of metalanguage begins to develop naturally in children from the age of 5 and 7 (Herriman 1994).Therefore, the argument that the children cannot learn metalanguage and thus they cannot learn grammar is rejected but the question remains whether grammar and metalanguage whether easy or difficult are worth teaching or not.
3. Practical benefits from the teaching of Grammar
In what follows I will argue that the teaching of grammar has a lot to offer to the intellectual development ofthe young people. I repeat that I will restrict my arguments to the grammar in its narrow sense, i.e.,(grammatical elements, and rules). I do not think that the interest about language is exhausted with the strictly formalelements neither do I propose that these are the only things that the children should be taught. I simply consider that these formal elements constitute the minimal central linguistic mechanism which must be the necessary component of any grammatical approach and of whatever further examination of the language.
Let us begin from the following question. What do we consider that the student must know when he finishes school? We will agree that the least expected from him is to understand without difficulties and to produce without much effort spoken language correctly constructed with words appropriate for the communicative needs of his/her age.
We saw earlier that these elements the student either knows when she/he comes to school or he/she learns them in a natural, indirect way from his/her contact with the data in the communicative environment For these abilities, therefore, the student does not need to be taught rules of grammar. Nor does he/she need to specially explore the structure of the language. This conclusion is strengthened by the facts that people who have not had any schooling communicate quite well, that there are communities whose members have no schooling, that folk poetry but also the epic poetry of the Ancient Greeks,( ie. (Homer) were not createdby people who had explicit grammatical knowledge etc.
A significant contribution of grammar is the fact that through grammar the student is made aware of the characteristics of his language, its formal properties and the functions they fulfil. He/she is exposed to the systematicity, the regularities, the multiplicity of the relations between its elements and the endless productivity of its rules. For example, the correct presentation of the grammar of Greek will lead to the realisation that the Greek of today, the Modern Greek, does not lacksystematicity and therefore, it must not be considered the result of ignorance and corruption of the Classical language as many devotees of Ancient Greek believe. When the students through the presentation of its grammar will see that Modern Greek isas systematic as Classical Greek even though the categories and the rules have changed somewhat, they will be less susceptible to the oratory of narrow minded fanatics who believe that we must return to the classical Greek. According to them all the problems of the Greek society derive from the corruption of the language.
Another positive outcome of grammar teaching concerns the correct evaluation of the standard form of a language (Dendrinou 2000). Societies today especially those with an education system and for which the question is raised about the teaching of grammar are both socially and linguistically very complex. Within such a society even a small one like Greek, the language has many different dimensions and it is required to satisfy more functions. In such societiesit is very important to teach the people the standard varietybased on its grammar
The Greek language, like many other languages contains many local dialects which differ from the official standard. For example, the expression that somebody from Crete will use to ask his interlocutor about his health is [inda kanis]. and not the standard [ti kanis] or [ti kanete]. He will also say [idoka tu to] ‘I gave it to him’ and not the standard [tu to edosa]. School is obliged to teach the standard lexicon and the standard grammar which will secure wider and better communication and will strengthen the common identity among all the people of the community.It will also strengthen the identity of the Greeks in the diaspora. But in order to teach the standard we mustrefer to grammatical categories and rules of grammar. For example to discuss the standard form of the Greek examples above we must speak of verbs, pronouns, person, case, order, imperative etc.
We must note that the teacher needs to have sensitivity and must take care to avoid making the student think that his local dialect is inferior and must reject it. Instead the student should see that he can operate with both varieties depending on the situation. For this the informed educator can point out that the local variety too has systematicity. Here too the teacher will have to refer to the grammar of the dialect. The issues pertaining to the varieties of a language should not be avoided. On the contrary they should be discussed in the classroom. Presenting the grammar of both standard and the varieties offers the best opportunity to avoid prejudices.
The language variation which young people have to face is not restricted to the local (geographical) type. In Greece we had an example of ‘Diglossia’i.e., the coexistence of two linguistic codes Dimotiki and Katharevousa each one with its own functions. The problem of Diglossia no longer exists since in 1976 the state recognised as official the ‘Dimotiki’ But the coexistence of two varieties next to each other for hundreds of years left a more complex language with elements from both Dimotiki and from the Learned variety via Katharevousa.
The elements of the Learned tradition belong mainly to the more formal style and for this reason they do not appear frequently in the everyday informal discourse. Thus while it is possible for a student in his communication with his friends to come across the First Declension word Nom:[o mathitis] ‘the student’Gen:[tu mathiti, ect ] it is less likely that he will have encountered the 3rd Declention nounNom [epimelis]‘studious’,Gen:[tu epimelus]Thus because the two elements have the same ending in the Nom they may be considered as belonging to the same morphological paradigm. As a consequence the learned adjective may be reinterpreted as being declined like the Dimotiki noun of the First declention ‘mathitis.
The presentation in the class of the morphological paradigms which will include the patterns of the Learned tradition will make the student more sensitive to the character of his language and its history and will present to him allthe morphological patterns so that it will not be a random occurrence whether he comes across the forms of; for example, the 3rddeclention adjectives or not.We see, therefore, that the explicit teaching of the inflectional paradigms completes the gaps that may existin the experience of the student.
Returning to the issue of the teaching ofthestandard we must stress that it should not be presented as a closed system without variants and choices. For example we present the form Gen:[ tis kivernisis] ‘of the government’ in parallel with the alternative from the 3rd Declention Gen [tis kivernisis], We alsohave the form of 1st Pers. Pres. Ind.[agapo] ‘I love’ alternating with [agapao] In some circumstances one form is used in a specific context, linguistic or social,with some slight difference. In other cases the choice is free, the result of taste or habit.Also variants like GEN.PL.[ton petaloύdon] ‘of the butterflies’ with immovable stress, as the adjectives require instead of the correct [ton petaludόn] as the nouns demand have some systematic justification, as observed byΘεοφανοπούλου-Κοντού who has used this particular example (1999:254). «These departures from the standard ruleconstitute indications for the existence of some degree of vagueness and lack of clarity and they create the conditions for a possible change in the next stage of the language. These phenomena, do not lead to the view that grammar should not be taught they rather strengthen the need for its teaching. The variants are connected with stylistic dimensions. All such phenomena show that language combines both strict systematicity but also some choice.