Grammar - where next in English teaching

A response from the Secondary National Strategy in the context of the  "English 21" conversations

Background:

• The variety of languages called English will continue to grow through electronic and multi media communication.
• British English is one form of a continuously changing world language.

Issues:

• The term grammar, which carries previous centuries' prescriptive overtones, is too narrow to be useful for the 21st century.
• Pupils need to be taught explicitly about their language and should experience the enjoyment of knowing about, understanding and using the formal and informal variations of English they will encounter in life

Teaching and learning:

• The teacher's role will be to support pupils' growing understanding and control of language through drawing attention to its features, exploring and discussing choices and effects, using appropriate metalanguage.
• Explicit teaching about language features should combine with giving pupils opportunity to explore, experiment with, and apply those features over time.
• Pupils, irrespective of ability, culture, ethnicity or background, should acquire the knowledge and understanding of language forms required to use English flexibly, appropriately and confidently, and understand others' uses. English teaching should equip them with the capacity to make choices as communicators and to respond critically.
• Language study is powerful and interesting in its own right.  Pupils should be provided with opportunities to do language investigations and collections to highlight what is common, conventional and distinctive in language.
• Research evidence is clear that sentence combining is an effective method of improving the syntactic maturity of pupils' writing
• Descriptions of grammar will develop as the forms and nature of communication evolve – and this reinforces reasons to help young people to develop both a framework of understanding and a sense of linguistic tolerance.

Specifically, in 2015:

• Pupils need to be able to explain the impact of writers' and communicators' choices in creating text, crafting sentences and choosing and deploying words in written, spoken and multi-media forms of communication
• Pupils need to know about spelling conventions and strategies, word families and morphemes.
• Teaching about language should be explicit and relate closely to examples drawn purposefully from real texts and situations. 
• Teaching sequences for writing, speaking and listening should include modeled analysis of text examples to make the features explicit at text, sentence and word and to encourage pupils to see how these relate to message, viewpoint and impact. Pupils should have opportunity to experiment with and apply the features in wider contexts and to generalise about and evaluate their own language uses. 
• Teaching about language use and impact should encompass electronic or multi media text. 

Progress and progression:

By 11

• Can construct a well-organised sentence, and strengthen it by adding, deleting and replacing words, phrases and clauses.
• Can write well-organised paragraphs.
• Can describe what is distinctive in the way a sentence is expressed e.g. how words have been chosen for impact.
• Recognises some obvious ways in which language varies to suit audience and purpose.

By 14

• Can organise and punctuate a complex sentence, adapt and re-express it to achieve different effects.
• Can write well-organised and well-signposted paragraphs.
• Can explain how sentences have been organised and with what effect.
• Can adapt and flex language to suit different audiences and purposes.

By 16

• Can manipulate word, sentence and text level features of language to achieve different effects.
• Can develop shapely and diverse paragraphs. 
• Can analyse own and others' language choices at word, sentence and text level.

An independent commentary on the Strategy's approach to the teaching of grammar and its links with other agencies' work, by Richard Hudson, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics,University College London  can be found at the following site: www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/kal/top.htm.

Professor Hudson has also written a useful set of self-instruction material on grammar for KS3 teachers: www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/tta/KS3.htm.