Traditional grammar instruction is a challenging element of the English curriculum; both students and teachers struggle with the rules and dull nature of grammar. However, understanding grammar is important because students need to understand the language they speak in order to be effective communicators, and teachers provide grammar instruction…

One of the central and defining features of man is language; there can be no deep understanding of man without some understanding of language. Linguistics is the "orderly examination of language in terms appropriate to itself." The central task of linguistics is grammar, the study of the patterning that brings together sounds or symbols with…

Examines the reason why new grammar has failed to make the impact that was predicted fifteen or so years ago.(RB)

THE ENGLISH CURRICULUM CAN BE MADE MORE EFFECTIVE BY CONSIDERING THE SIGNIFICANT PART PLAYED BY THE COMPONENT OF GRAMMAR. THE NATIVE SPEAKER OF ENGLISH POSSESSES AN INTUITIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE RULES OF GRAMMAR AND YET CANNOT EXPLAIN WHAT HIS INTUITION KNOWS. THEREFORE, A PRECISE, ECONOMICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE LANGUAGE MECHANISM AND HOW IT FUNCTIONS…

In tracing the development of language curriculum in public schools, one discovers that prior to the twentieth century grammar was the center of linguistic attention. Around the beginning of the century, psychologists and others were doing research on the supposed efficacious results of such study and were finding that such supposed results were…

Discusses the continuing controversy over how to teach grammar. Finds that the traditional, structural, and transformational approaches each have their strengths and weaknesses, with none clearly better than the others. Suggests that the teaching of grammar, while not the key to improvement in written English, will always have a place in the…

A project to investigate the effects on the language development of secondary school pupils of a study of transformational grammar as represented in the Oregon English Curriculum involved 250 students in a large, coeducational high school near Auckland, New Zealand. The students were divided into three matched groups who studied different English…

This paper is divided into the following five sections, each of which considers an aspect of teaching grammar: the importance of teaching English grammar, teaching the patterns of words and sentences, the functions of words, making sentences, and a curriculum proposal for teaching standard English in the elementary grades through high school. (LL)

This study summarizes the kinds of English grammar currently taught in American secondary schools and describes the effects of curriculum proposals by scholars upon the teaching of language and composition. A survey of grammar from classical Greek and Roman times to the present precedes a description of specific types of grammar (e.g.,…

A program of new approaches to teaching composition, funded under an ESEA Title 3 grant, led English teachers at Woodridge High School, Peninsula, Ohio, to test two theories: (1) that no significant difference in writing skills would exist between students exposed to the traditional, formal grammar course and those taught composition through the…

This unit is intended to give ninth-grade students a brief survey of the changes in the study of language from the time of the Greeks to the present. Organized to proceed from the teacher's introduction of a subject to class examination and discussion of an excerpt from a grammarian's work, the unit focuses on the belief that a grammarian's…